Pureblood
by teguqueen
Summary: JK Rowlings created a world of magic that feels nearly as real as our own. The characters and places you recognize are the fruits of her rich imagination.  In this tale Snape meets his match. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, touches of adventure.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"Albus, just tell me what it is that I'm going to be displeased about. I enjoy having tea with you, but I have far too much that I need to accomplish today to wait around for you to try to break it to me gently. You don't call me up and make small talk unless you are going to spring something unpleasant upon me." Snape drained his teacup, set it on the headmaster's desk, and awaited the bad news, with an expression of mild annoyance.

"Severus, I feel that we are going to be at war again soon. You've felt changes in the brand Voldemort put on you. I've sensed an awakening of darkness as well. Few of our people have any training in combat. I've called in one of my distant kinfolk to help, a wizard who fought in all three of the American vampire wars and taught at the American wizarding war college. Not only skilled at battle, but most importantly, skilled at forms of magic and weapons we have never seen here. We need every advantage we can get if we're to survive the coming troubles."

Snape groaned. He poured himself another cup of tea, rolled his eyes, and inquired silkily "When does your kinsman arrive to show all of us poor ignoramuses how to cast a curse?"

Dumbledore permitted himself a wide grin. "You have already made one erroneous assumption about that particular wizard. I should be kind and correct you, but I think this time I'll let you figure it out on your own. And, Severus, this is an American. We're all aware that their culture is different. Show a little tolerance. You're going to be welcoming our visiting wizard in Hogsmeade."

Snape shot the headmaster a dark glare. Albus smiled back sweetly. Oh, this should be fun, Dumbledore thought. I would love to be a fly on the wall when he finds out just what sort of wizard he'll be dealing with.

* * *

><p>Snape scowed and paced the train station platform. Per schedule the express was not due for another 15 minutes, but Snape was early as usual and per usual he perceived it as being someone else's fault that he had to wait. He did not appreciate being selected as an escort for some foreigner who almost certainly commanded a rear echelon position since he had made it alive through all three vampire wars. Snape had poked around in the library earlier in the evening to refresh his memory, and was somewhat astonished at both the scope and violence of the American wars. They had involved not only thousands of vampires but also wizards, sorcerers, witches, werewolves, and more. He faintly smiled to himself as thought about what he would have liked to said to the headmaster when the onerous duty was dumped on him.<p>

A scattering of small scratching sounds drew his gaze to the far end of the platform. A rat climbed out of a garbage can. A swift glance at the other end of the platform told him that the rest of the people waiting on passengers were watching the train approach and that he was unobserved. Snape drew his wand stealthily and flicked it at the rodent. It let out a mangled shriek and fell. Snape placed his wand back into his sleeve and turned to find that now everyone on the platform was staring at him. He dramatically shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes. The crowd turned away, most wearing expressions of frank disgust. Another small smile.

The train pulled to a hissing stop and the passengers disembarked. Severus fumed. No wizard. He had wasted his evening on a man who couldn't be bothered to show up to be brought to the school. Then he heard a voice behind him asking "Severus Snape? Is that you?"

He turned and found himself facing a short smiling woman clad in a battered leather bomber jacket, nondescript t-shirt and obviously old jeans. She looked to be perhaps thirty or so years old, but it was difficult to guess-she had a young looking face that didn't marry well with her thick mane of stark white hair. Only her black lashes and brows and a few residual strands of color betrayed the fact that she once had hair as dark as a raven's wing. Severus was visibly shocked at the notion of a female "wizard," and found himself nodding stupidly, incapable of speech. The woman held out her hand to shake his and by some ingrained habit he was able to respond properly. "I'm Deb Jenkins" she said. "Albus's cousin, the American wizard. He described you perfectly. Nice piece of work with the rat."

Snape led the woman to the carriage, still dumbstruck and wondering how she could know about the rat because she was still on the train when that happened. She spied the hitch of thestrals and moved forward to inspect them. "So these are thestrals?" She stroked one gently and looked back at Snape for confirmation. Again, the idiotic nod. She smiled again. "I've read about these but never seen them before. We don't have any in America."

Snape's power of speech finally returned. "I'll have the porters load your luggage in the carriage and we'll be off."

"No don't bother about luggage, there is none. I shrank what few thing I will need immediately and I have them in my pocket. My family keeps an ancestral home not too far from here, well in stringing distance and I've had most of my things sent there." (Stringing? he wondered. Some means of transport?) I really don't think that Hogwarts needs to be bothered by dealing with all of my animals. And while I'm staying at Hogwarts my quarters will likely get crowded anyways, with all of my wand making stuff."

Good grief, what to say to this female wizard? He was not one much for small talk. "Hagrid will be wanting to meet you, then. He's our gamekeeper." That seemed safe enough. "What sorts of animals do you have?"

"A few horses. A crow. A cat. Six pythons. A small basilisk….."

"A basilisk? You brought a basilisk here?" Severus was again astounded. "Do you have any idea what a basilisk can do?" He spoke slowly, as if trying to communicate with an idiot.

"Being as I breed them and train them, I am aware of the abilities of a basilisk. Of course it mostly depends on what they are bred out of and which generation they are. F 1 and F 2 hybrids are pretty much untrainable. F 4 and beyond make amazing familiars. A battle trained basilisk can take out people you could never hope to get a good shot on. I'll show you sometime." She turned toward him and grinned. "Surely y'all don't still believe that you die if you see their eyes or that you make a basilisk by letting a toad incubate a chicken egg?" she drawled, giving it her very best back-home redneck twang. His face told her that indeed he did. She broke into a fit of choking laughter. Severus scowled furiously. When she finally composed herself long enough to catch her breath, she caught sight of the scow, and her laughter resumed.

Severus sulked for the rest of the trip, and mercifully the American wizard who appeared to his eyes to be exactly like a witch in mediocre garb had the good sense to mostly shut up. She took in the countryside, looking about as evening deepened into night. "This part of Scotland is more beautiful than I imagined." she softly observed. Severus did not deign to reply. He inwardly seethed from the indignity of being laughed at by some short brash witch who had the gall to call herself a wizard.

* * *

><p>Albus was waiting to greet them when the carriage arrived at the castle gate. He took both of the woman's hands in his own and studied her face for several seconds before speaking. "Deborah, it's good to finally meet you! I knew your father from when he was stationed here during the second World War. You look so very much like him, especially that same white hair. Even though we've never met before, your father made me feel as if I knew you. He was always bragging about you and your wand making skill. He also said that you knew nastier curses at the age of ten than most wizards will learn if they live to be one hundred." The headmaster glanced at Severus. "You and our Professor Snape should get along brilliantly-you share that particular interest. That and concocting poisons."<p>

"I'd like that very much, cousin."

Severus scowled. In return, Deb presented him with the broadest and cheesiest of smiles. Albus beamed. Snape shot the headmaster a dark look, bringing a grin to the old wizard's face. Inwardly Snape groaned. Once again he was the unhappy victim of Dumbledore's love of unnecessary drama.

Albus placed an arm across Deborah's shoulder and walked with her through the gates. "Welcome to Hogwarts, dear cousin. Consider her your home for as long as you like. If there is anything you need come to me or to Severus and we will do anything we can to be of service."

* * *

><p>Deborah strolled the corridors that midnight, familiarizing herself with the castle layout. She asked a magical painting if there was any place it knew of where she could obtain a little gentian violet in the morning. "You can get it tonight. There is plenty of it in the potions room and Professor Snape is working late tonight."<p>

"Thanks so much!" She started down the steps.

Snape was still peeved at having to waste his time dragging some American wizard to Hogwarts, and not even a real wizard, just a stupid witch. "Concentrate, concentrate!" he whispered to himself. He spoke the cracking spell at the stubborn _Quercus mephitis _nut he was trying to open. Not even a light crazing appeared on the surface; not even powdering. Someone knocked at his door. Snape scowled and ignored it. They knocked again. Fuming, he got up, strode to the door, and opened it to find Dumbledore's pretend wizard cousin, the very reason he hadn't had time to work on cracking the nut earlier.

"Severus, I'm sorry to bother you this late but the magical pictures said you were still working down here. Could I trouble you for a little gentian violet? I'm working on something in my room and I just realized that I forgot to pack it."

"Why of course!" he said in a frosty voice. "I have all of the time in the world to dispense botanicals for charms. I'll be right back."

He retrieved the material, growing angrier by the second. When he returned he found that the American witch had the audacity to be wandering around his potions laboratory, hands clasped behind her back, looking over his equipment.

He thrust the small packet at her. "Here is your gentian. Now, if you would be so kind as to excuse me, I must get back to work if I'm to open a _Quercus mephitis _nut. It's not something that I would expect you to understand, but it will require a great deal of effort and attention."

"Oh, stink oak. Want me to open that for you?"

"That would be so wonderful if you actually could, but I'm afraid that it's not so easy as bashing it with a rock. The shell is quite resistant to both force and magic, but I really didn't expect for you to know that."

Deborah walked to the table then reached into her sleeve and pulled out an unusual looking slender wand. She lightly touched the stink oak acorn. Trickles of blue energy crawled over it's surface. She gave it a gentle tap and the acorn cracked cleanly into halves. She turned and flashed a insincere beauty pageant fake smile. "Will that do, Severus, or do you require my assistance in peeling it as well?"

"How did you do that?" Snape growled.

"With my little wand." She wiggled it in front of his nose then replaced it in her sleeve. "And now I'm going to return to my room and whip up a little doublecut blue goatclaw tisane. It's quite useful in correcting oily hair and scalp conditions and as I can plainly see, you _didn't_ know that. Sweet dreams, Severus." She blew a kiss as she strolled out the door.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2.

Snape entered Dumbledore's office early the next morning, eager to make his displeasure over the new "wizard" known. Alas, the distant cousins were already breakfasting on tea and pastries, and discussing a very unusual wand.

Dumbledore turned the wand slowly in his fingers, examining the surfaces and hefting it to feel the balance. "Severus, take a look at this wand! This is amazing!" Dumbledore handed it over and although he would have liked to ignore the handiwork of the woman he now thought of as the pretentious American witch, Snape's was a curious soul and he had to see it for himself. The wand, how such a thing could possibly even function as such, had no carving or burls or decoration whatsoever. It was a thin, slightly tapering cylinder of wood that essentially looked like a chopstick. It felt too light. It felt like junk to Snape. He brought it closer to his eyes and could see that it was formed of three sections with faint seams running the length of the slender wand's dark rich wood. He arched an eyebrow, gave the American witch a quizzical look, and handed the wand to her.

The American witch proceeded to open one of Albus's office windows. This window faced a several ton boulder that marred the lawn since the castle was constructed and which workmen had long despaired of removing by magical or ordinary means. It would not budge and a boulder of that size would have to be reduced to rubble by dynamite to be removed. Explosives were of the question so close to the school.

"Albus, is that the rock you said you want moved, and where do you want me to put it?" Is that field across the fence OK?" The headmaster indicated that it was.

Dumbledore joined her at the window and Snape watched over the top of her head-she was that short. She pointed the wand at the huge rock and made the slightest of upward flicks with the wand. "Lift" she commanded.

The boulder gracefully floated free of the earth, revealing a immense underground base. "No wonder they couldn't pull it out." She raised the tip of the wand ever so lightly and the boulder levitated over the fence and hovered over the field. Lowering the wand, she set it down gently.

"Oh, yes, wonderful! The workmen can come out today and break it up and cart it away."

"I can make it a little easier for them, cousin." She lightly snapped the wand toward the boulder. "Pulverize." A thin white ray of light shot from the end of the wand, struck the boulder, and reduced the granite to a pile of gravel.

She turned back to Severus. "This is a quad core wand. Wicked strong." she said, grinning. "I've tweaked my methods and gotten a lot better at it since I messed around and made this first one, but it's still passable. Like it?"

* * *

><p>Later that night Severus was hunched over a cauldron in his lab when someone walked up behind him. "How's the hex blocking potion coming along?" He whirled and there stood the American wizard. She held a paper bag in her right hand.<p>

"And just what would lead you to think that I'm making a hex blocking potion?" he said with a sneer, even though that was precisely what he was brewing.

"Oh, because stink oak nuts are only used for three things I can think of offhand. You're not scratching or squirming so that rules out Crabbanish. And while it does contain stink oak nuts, the elixir of homoerotic attraction smells like ck one, not spoiled clams. Not that there's anything wrong with someone making the elixir of homoerotic attraction." She flashed him one of her brightest smiles.

"So you ventured down into my dungeon so for the purposes of finding if out if I am infested with vermin or a homosexual? How sweet of you. I suppose that I should be flattered at your concern."

"Who crapped in your cornflakes? I don't need to sniff potions to tell if a man is gay or not, and I know that you aren't. Albus must not have told you but I'm an empath. It's a magical gift that is only found in America. The most widely held theory at the moment is that it is a mutation of the gene that causes ligilmancy. There are several theories but if you follow the bloodlines where it crops up the mutated gene theory makes the most sense."

_Yes, I can read your thoughts when you use your mind to speak to me. Ligilmancy and empathy are compatible that way. I'm sorry that I startled you tonight-you left your door wards off so I thought that it would be alright to come in. I came down here to bring you this. I did not come down here to make you miserable, and what the hell is wrong with you? Snape, I don't know why you're trying to make something out of nothing but please stop. I am not your enemy, I like you, but I am so not the one to start a pissing contest with. I would love for us to get along. But if you want to be an asshole, I can be one right back._

She offered him the paper bag, and after an instant of hesitation he took it.

_Do you know that when something surprises you that you start blinking rapidly? I'm not picking at you, I sense a little of the things you do in an extracurricular sense and I thought that you would want to know so that you can control it and keep yourself a little safer._

"What is in this bag?" Snape was willing himself not to blink and failing miserably.

"It's a basilisk shed. I didn't know if you would want to try it out, but I use them in quite a few potions. They add strength to ones that call for snake shed and tighter control to those that call for dragon scales. Regardless, it makes an interesting wall hanging."

Severus reached into the bag and pulled out a rolled cylinder of crackly translucent skin. "I've never seen one of these before. How can you tell this is from a basilisk and not from a snake?"

"Several ways. I'll show you some of them." She unrolled the delicate skin on the lab table. "See these holes for the eyes? A snake sheds with a clear spectacle scale over the eye, not a hole. Here are the holes where the vestigial wings and legs are located on a basilisk. They almost never shed cleanly." She moved on down. "See where the end of the tail is missing? That is because of the basilisk's feathers."

"They have feathers?"

"Only a few. It's an atavistic trait that only expresses when a dragon and snake are hybridized. That is how you make a basilisk-it's a magically induced hybrid. The thing about sticking a chicken egg under a toad story is an old wives tale."

"I've never seen one. I've only seen woodcuts of them. They've been forbidden here for over four hundred years. How did you get them to let you bring one with you?"

"If basilisks are outlawed only outlaws will have basilisks. It's a joke. I did get approval. I did a complementary pole dance at the Ministry of Magic" she said. Snape blinked rapidly. "That was a joke too. Severus, Dumbledore is my cousin and he invited me here. You can probably take that and figure out how I got approval for my basilisk."

* * *

><p>A few nights later, a confrontation of epic proportions took place in the dungeon laboratory. The magical images in the area fled quaking to the upper halls and could not be induced to return to their portraits nor to calmed sufficiently to be able to describe the horror of what they had witnessed. Albus and a few other professors rushed to intercede but when they reached the laboratory in the dungeon they found the doors heavily charmed and cursed by both wizards. They could not broach the wards.<p>

The lab had not been exceptionally well warded for sound, though. The crash of glass breaking, thuds, screaming, profanity, evil laughter, taunts, and worst of all, bagpipes sometimes escaped the magical bounds, causing the staff on a mission of mercy to instinctively huddle and cringe. After an hour of listening to snippets of vile curses, creatively framed accusations of acts of extreme perversity, and threats of grave bodily harm, the would-be rescuers concluded that there was nothing that they could do to assist either party that night and left. They would return to tend to the survivors, if any, in the morning.

The next morning members of the Hogwarts staff were astonished to find Severus and Deborah calmly seated across from each other in the staff dining room, unharmed, neither showing any indication of animosity toward the other. Snape politely asked her if she wanted the sports section of her copy of the Daily Prophet. Deborah graciously separated it out for him and accepted his thanks with a small nod and a sincere smile. Occasionally one would look up at the other as if to ask a question or to give a reply but they spoke no further. Both ate heartily. Nothing seemed much out of the ordinary at all, save for the small coincidence that each visited the liquor storeroom after breakfast then retired to his personal quarters for a very long nap.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3.

Deborah had gone "stringing" off to her ancestral home, wherever that might be, leaving Snape and Dumbledore to catch up on things. Snape thoughtfully rolled her slender quad core wand in his fingers. It was really quite unbelievable that such an insubstantial tool could give such fine control and wield such destructive power. "I'm very tempted to take this out and give it a dance, Albus. Amazing thing."

"From what Deb has told me, that could be a phenomenally bad idea, as in 'might get you blown to small gory bits.' She says that quad core wands must be custom made for each user. Some of it is figuring out how much power each person naturally strikes with and choosing the wood that best accommodates it. Some of it is deciding what magical power source is best to use for the cores. Some of it is in placing the 'outliers' correctly, and I have no clue as to what that would entail. Oh, and she mentioned that wizard and witches wands are not one and the same. I think she was stating that in the American usage of the terms."

"Well, then, can you enlighten me as to why one who is obviously female is calling herself a wizard and not a witch? I feel a little creepy calling a woman a wizard."

"Severus, in America the titles given in the magical world are far different that ours. From what little she has told me their entire magical world is far different from ours. Vampires, for example, are very common and they also use wand magic, but they use a very specific sort of wand. Wizards and vampires enforce the few magical laws they have. The overall state of the magical community there could probably best compared to the United States "wild west" culture of the 1800s"

"An American child with magical abilities enters magical training at five years of age, not eleven. They school up to the age of 18 to be recognized as witches, whether male or female. Beyond that there are four more years of training to be recognized as a sorcerer. Beyond that stage, you can earn the title of wizard in one of at least three ways-I can't remember all of them but I do know that one is by spending an additional three years of school and presenting proof of magical proficiency or original magical creation, such as when Deb created the quad core wands or in the case of an impressive body of finely crafted curses. Another has something to do with being award the rank of wizard in battle. One has something to do with heredity, and while I'm thinking of it Americans have a much different view of what a pureblood is. Deb's an American pureblood. Their society never did mix with muggles, they are much as we were in the 1600s-immersed in Muggle society but not interbreeding.. Muggle-borns and half bloods are extremely rare and yet totally accepted when they occur. Deb can trace her own pure magical lineage back for over 2000 years. She's so pureblooded that your Dark Lord put in a request for her hand in marriage before she was even born."

"He has never mentioned anything about this that I am aware of! What happened?"

"Her father, Roman, cheerfully informed Tom Riddle that when it did come to pass that a daughter would be born to his household (and true prophesy had told him that his first child would be a daughter) should Tom Riddle approach within 500 miles of her then as her father and protector he would derive great personal satisfaction from casting upon Tom the family's favorite castration curse, handed down faithfully generation to generation from before the time of their illustrious ancestor Merlin, equally effective on cattle, horses, loud rutting cats, and unworthy suitors. Roman told me that he was contemplating using the dreaded piano wire variant, if I recall correctly."

"Is there such a thing?" Snape's eyes widened. "I've never heard of it."

"Oh yes, and it does work. Remember the stray tomcat you used to bitch about last year that woke you up squalling all night and habitually pissed outside your window?" Snape did indeed remember the disgusting creature and the relief he had felt when it had moved on.

"There you go." Albus raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes in a bad parody of wide eyed innocence. Snape cringed. "Deb's father taught me that curse and Deb herself is a walking encyclopedia of curses and wand work. Ask her, she'll teach you how to do it."

"She's only about a year older than you are and she's been made a full Knight at the Court of Merlin, which is kind of like our Order of Merlin except that you have to actually be descended from Merlin to be eligible for theirs. Her family is truly amazing. Her brother is helping the vampires bring the last of the rogue werewolves under control. Deb served briefly as supreme commander of the vampire forces during the last war, and she is the only non-vampire to ever hold the position. Her father was a soldier in the muggle army in the last World War who used his magical abilities for espionage."

Dumbledore paused for a moment. "Tom Riddle went back once more to try to start trouble in America, just before the troubles here, figuring that there were so many purebloods there that he could get them to go along with his muggle persecutions. They told him to "stick his divisive bullshit where the sun doesn't shine and don't let the door hit him in the ass on the way out." If I remember correctly, it was Deb's maternal uncle who delivered the message. Her family has been guardians of the magical world for centuries. It's bred into them, just like black hair that goes snow white before they turn forty, which passes down from her father's side."

At that moment Deborah entered the room, carrying some sticks, tools, and something that looked like a handful of hairs and a few dirty feathers. She shot Severus a grin. "I've found all sorts of great wand making stuff while I was roaming around earlier. Want to see how to make a quad core?"

* * *

><p>Severus and Deborah hunched over several wood pieces, tools, and pots of glue and varnish on a small formica table in the back corner of the staff's private dining room, used for summer vacations or when a professor could not tolerate another minute of seeing students chewing with their mouths open or picking their noses and sticking snot balls under the tables. Throughout the day professors walked past, offering a few words of greetings and silently wondering what would possess their rather surly potions master to not only tolerate the company of a stranger but to do so while appearing to be working on some sort of arts and crafts project. Although everyone had heard that Snape and Deborah had gotten into some sort of a world class fight one night, no one really wanted to be the one who asked them about the event and neither one ever spoke of the occurrence. Hours flew by unnoticed by the pair. A shaft of black locust had been split into three sections from end to end, resembling precise slices of a very deep pie. A long grey feather was trimmed to a thin straight spear. Three coarse hairs, the "outliers" were selected and clipped to length. Tiny channels were gouged in each piece of wood to give the outliers a place to rest. Deborah explained the process as she worked.<p>

"Depending on the spell, when you use a single core wand to curse, you can see what appears as jagged lightening exit the tip of the wand and that erratic lightening is the power output of your wand. Even when working a spell with non-visible energy output the same scattering is occurring, you just can't see it. Much of that output is lost because while wand wood contains and aims, it doesn't efficiently compress and thereby focus that magical energy. The energy scatters and while enough hits the target to do something, because of energy loss you don't reap maximum effect. Magical outliers compress energy into a more precise pattern, and cut energy loss down to almost nothing."

She showed Severus the channel created for the main core of the wand by shaving away a tiny bit of the apex of each "pie" slice. "This will be the main core and we'll fill it after we've set the outliers." She placed each precisely glued outlier hair in it's tiny channel and then the three parts of the wood cylinder were glued together to make a wand with a hollow core and finally clamped. "This will take at least a half hour to dry, even with our incantations. Let's grab something to eat."

Around four thirty they raided the kitchen. Severus made hamburgers, Deborah cut and cooked the French fries. The house elves were mildly distressed and confused. Something was terribly amiss. Since when did Severus Snape ever cook anything or serve anyone food or laugh?

Dumbledore strolled into the staff's summer dining room at seven in the evening to see for himself that which had prompted comments, conjecture, and information fishing from the rest of the staff regarding an unusual activity taking place in there. He was just in time to catch Severus and Deborah seated side by side, sealing a Pegasus feather core into his quad core wand.

He stood behind them, looking over their shoulders. "So, this is the little arts and crafts project that had everyone pumping me for information. He glanced at the new wand. "This does not look like the other one."

"It's not. Deb has a different style of wand use than I do. She uses shorter motions. She also uses a lighter touch. I need a thicker wand because I use larger motions and need the elements a bit more protected. She doesn't have as much primary scatter as I do so she can use a flexible outlier. I strike a little harder so I need a more rigid outlier to contain the primary scatter."

"You're really getting into this, Severus. When are you going to see how well it works?"

Deborah gathered her tools and supplies together then glanced up at her cousin. "Tomorrow morning after breakfast we're going out to the old quarry and test Sev's quad core out. When you hear the explosions, you'll know that we've either been very successful or that we've blown ourselves up." She turned to Severus. "Let's meet up with you in the kitchen around seven am. We can grab something to eat and then head on out." She critically appraised what appeared to be Snape's customary attire day in and day out. "Ummmm, and oh yeah, wear something old that you don't mind getting ruined."

The old headmaster returned to his room in a lighthearted mood. It might not last, but even if it didn't he had witnessed something he never in his life thought he would see again. He lifted his quill and entered it into his diary. _For the first time in a long time, I have seen Severus happy._


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

At 6:45 am, Severus and Deb nearly collided as they headed into the staff dining room. Both 15 minutes early. As per their usual habits.

Deb wore what Severus would soon come to discover was nearly a uniform for her. Jeans. Scruffed up black hiking boots. A ratty looking t-shirt.

Snape appeared suitably disheveled in a set of stained green sweats which had been thrown rolled up in the back of his closet, last worn when he was a seventh year student. The grubby gym shoes which had languished on the floor along with the sweat shirt and pants completed the ensemble. He presented himself to her. "I can safely say that if I should damage these, no one could ever possibly notice." She silently voiced her approval of his choices.

Each selected what he wanted from the buffet the house elves had prepared then sat down together at the back corner of the table. They chatted about spells, curses that no one else would dream of mentioning at the table, and, of course, the black locust wand. Minerva had returned from vacation late at night so she had not been introduced to Deborah and she had missed the previous day's hot gossip. Walking into dining room the dining room caught her totally off guard; she did a double take. Severus Snape never wore sweatsuits. He never conversed with anyone when he ate. He did not smile or exhibit foolish expessions. And he certainly never pinched a slice of bacon from a lady's plate and tolerated having his hand stabbed with a fork in return…..

She continued to stare as they got up from the table and headed for the door, oblivious to nearly everything but each other. Severus was walking in a manner that was almost…bouncy. Once they rounded the corner Minerva was further astonished to hear them running down the hall. When she glanced out the window she could see Severus and the white haired woman racing for the quarry, jostling each other, wands in hand.

Minerva knocked at the headmaster's office door and strode in without waiting for a reply. "Albus! Have you seen Severus Snape?"

"I may have. About six feet or so tall, dark hair, mostly wears black?"

"No, Albus, he always wears black. But today I saw him wearing his old Slytherin gym outfit, running through the halls, and positively scampering off over the moors with a white haired witch! Oh, yes, and each with wand in hand."

"Do you feel that this is something which I need to discourage?"

"I feel that this is something that you need to explain to me."

Dumbledore smiled. "Very well. The white haired woman you saw him run off with is a very proficient American wizard, my distant cousin whom we have been expecting. Wizard, in America, is a rank, not a term to denote gender. In some ways she and Severus are very much alike."

"Picture how Severus might have turned out if he had been brought up loved and encouraged as a child and not kept like a dirty little guttersnipe and kicked around by his own father. My cousin Deborah was never beaten down. Her father would have killed for her-he even chased off Tom Riddle when that one came sniffing around for an arranged pureblood marriage. Severus and Deborah are drawn to many of the same things. Neither intimidates the other. She seems to be immune to his anger and rudeness-to her it's funny."

"They are both fascinated by obscure curses, potions, and arcane magic. She is Severus without the Dark Mark; Severus not crippled by abuse, guilt, and unrequited love. He showed her his rude side straight off, and she showed him that she was not adverse to acting just as snarky and sarcastic as he is, and then she invited him to spend a day with her making a dreadnought of a quad core wand for him. They hit it off well. And they argue magnificently, but that seems to have settled down. He's letting down some of his guard with her.

A loud explosion sounded in the distance. The windows of the headmasters office rattled slightly. Another string of explosions followed. Then several more. A pillar of green flames shot up from the quarry site, followed by a huge cloud of dust. Distant shouts and cheers. Another string of explosions. Something that looked like a mushroom cloud. Balls of lightening shot into the sky. Minerva turned to Albus. "Did they reopen the old quarry? What is going on out there?"

Dumbledore laughed out loud. "No, Minerva, they haven't resumed work. What you're hearing is our Severus out there fooling around with his new wand and acting like a third year. He never found anyone to play with before who wasn't at least a little intimidated by his spite. He is making up for lost time."

"Do you really think that she is strong enough to put up with him?" Minerva asked.

Dumbledore laughed again. "My cousin and her family are legendary in American wizarding circles. I'd wager that she can outfight, out cuss, out hex, out shoot, and out drink Severus Snape on any given day of the week, and possibly beat him at arm wrestling. I'm starting to have a good feeling about those two together. She may end up being the best thing that ever happened to him."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5.

The staff gathered in the Room of Requirement, which discerned their purpose and configured itself into a long hall. House elves carried in trays of refreshments and placed them on a quickly conjured table near the spectator bleachers along the walls. Severus sat next to Deborah, and explained that the occasional evening of friendly dueling was a Hogwarts tradition to help break up the monotony of the long lazy summers for those who must stay to guard the school. Due to the current threat of war nearly all of the staff remained this year. She sipped a beer and watched the others as they trickled into the room. He rattled off the rules and various common strategies. She mostly watched the preparations, there were far too many rules for her tastes. They might as well be fighting with powder puffs at fifty paces.

While watching the setup Deborah decided that she was sitting this one out, wanting to check out unfamiliar English dueling styles to see if they were as dismally unlike real dueling as she was begining to think they would be. Dumbledore also excused himself from the sport, so she moved next to him and he gave her pointers and commentary on what she quickly judged to be a very impractical and unimaginative dueling style, very different from the type of fighting she had been trained for. She had long ago abandoned single core fighting and wondered if she even was capable of sportduelling anymore, or would even want to even try. And if she did, this type of stylized contest held no challenge.

One by one the contestants dueled and were eliminated. It came down to Severus Snape facing off against Filius Flitwick. The contest was close but to her delight Severus won. He bowed to his audience, then strolled to her side and nudged her. "Deb, come on. Let's do a duel. Just for fun."

"It's not really my thing." she said, glancing away. "English dueling is nothing like the style of dueling I've known. Honestly, I wouldn't know how to go about it. I'd break every one of your dozens of rules."

"Come on, just once. We don't need to worry about the formal rules. Don't you want to see if you can take me?"

"Nope. Not even slightly curious. I already know who would win."

"I won't harm you, no matter how miserably you lose. It's a lot of fun. You said I should have a little fun once and a while."

"Two people trying to knock the crap out of each other is not my idea of fun."

"Perhaps you'll concede that you already know that you can't best me."

"Single cores?"

"Of course. You do realize that we're not supposed to actually kill each other? That after I win I'm only going to pretend to have you at my mercy, begging for your life?" He laughed at her.

"Ever the snarky Snape. I give up. We'll go a round. But this is going to be a private duel. We'll spar after the rest clear out."

_Fine with me Deb. I can understand how it could be embarrasing when I win by a mile._

After the chairs were put away the room was theirs. They approached each other and bowed deeply. Deborah applied wards to the door. They drew wands, presented them in salute, and Snape made a mental note to ask her soon about her rather unique looking single core. They turned crisply and stood back to back' then each paced to his appointed end of the room. They spun around and faced each other.

Severus got off a first stunning shot which Deborah barely blocked, the curse coming so close that she felt fingers of magical scatter crawling on her hair. Turning sideways, she threw a disorientation spell, freezing him for only an instant before he blocked it with a charm. Severus grazed her with a paralysis curse that made her stumble. She hexed underhanded as she caught herself and distracted him with a ball of crackling red plasma hurled over his right shoulder. What looked like hot coals snaked across the floor toward him. He whipped his head and conjured an apparition of writhing maggots raining onto her head and shoulders. A blast of cold wind flopped his hair into his eyes. He pitched a blinding curse and missed. She shot a hex that made him feel like his skin was crawling.

As he turned back to throw a second stun, his wand was plucked from his hand and pulled to her left hand by wandless magic. With a flick of her wand she swept his feet out from under him throwing him onto his back and then pulled him by the heels toward her, stepping forward to straddle him as he arrived. She sat astride his body and pressed her wand up under his chin, lifting it slightly. He was shocked to see a predatory smile appear on her face. She bent lower and stared into his widened eyes. "Do you concede?" she whispered in a dusky voice.

"Obviously." He raised his hands above his head and closed his eyes in surrender.

"Good." She transferred her own wand into her left hand along with his captured wand. She reached and brushed the loose strands of damp dark hair from his forehead. He cringed and started to speak but she pressed her fingers to his lips. "ssshhh. It's OK. Just be still." His body was tense and she could him trembling faintly. She placed their wands on the floor beside them. She lightly ran her hands across his shoulders, frowning slightly when he closed his eyes more tightly and turned his head away. Then she lowered her face to his, swiftly pinned him by his wrists, and tenderly kissed his eyelids and cheeks. Severus flinched, drew a deep breath, then with a soft sigh pulled his lightly held wrists free and caressed her hair while raising his head to brush her lips with his own, delicately, like a silent leaf fall. Her hands cradled his face.

As she felt the tension leaving his body she moved off to lie beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. They gently held each other, neither one saying a word.

A few minutes passed. They arose and retrieved their wands, brushed the floor dust from each other, then silently walked back to her room. Before he departed they held each other once more and Deborah pressed her head against his chest for a precious several seconds, listening to the rapid beat of his heart.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The summer days fell into a loose routine. On most mornings Deborah and Severus meet at the staff dining room around ten o'clock. After a brief chat, or argument, or fight, or discussion-no one else could ever tell what was really going on between them-they would part and each pursue his own work.

Deborah outfitted many of the staff and others who would someday fight against Voldemort with quad cores and taught them how to use them. Severus brewed and distilled and compounded in his private sanctuary, the potions lab. They both took pride in being productive and respected for their abilities.

In the evenings they could be found at the formica table in the dimmest corner of the dining room, usually discussing the contents of one specimen box or another or playing cards while chatting, not that their chat was remotely akin to the normal variety given their passions for interesting poisons and dark curses. They rarely spoke to anyone else unless that person approached them and few people approached them as word had gotten out that overhearing some of their conversations could wreck one's digestion for a week and if that didn't do it a glimpse of the contents of one of Snape's specimen boxes probably would.

They kept their displays of affection for each other private. Occasionally someone would catch a flicker of a smile between them. But they were so low key that they could never be claimed to be any more intimate than any other two colleagues might act in the workplace. Still, their frequent companionship gave birth to a pastime that came to be known as 'Sevorah' watching.

"_Look, they're doing it again. Oh god, you missed it. She whispered something and he smiled for just a second there. Look, he's blushing! Yes, I can see that from here. Oh no, they're looking at us, look away, look away…"_

A popular theory was that during the witching hour the pair engaged in private revels deep within the Slytherin dungeons rivaling Death Eater debaucheries. Orgies of strange sex laced with drugs and dark magic were suspected. After all, look at Snape, scary mean and damn, if there wasn't something almost perverted about a female being a warrior wizard. She had killed hundreds of rogue vampires in her lifetime. Werewolves dare not hike a leg on her shrubbery, or so the saying went. And the pair of them kept company without being forced to do so. It all reeked of unwholesomeness. Particularly when there was very little else to do at Hogwarts in the summer except to spin the gossip mill.

Living with violence brings out the basest instincts in some people. Often the one who is hurt turns to inflicting pain on others, the only means of power they recognize. Battlefields can breed a penchant for brutality and a numbness to the suffering to others.

But at other times pain breeds an extraordinary hunger for peace and kindness. Contrary to the speculation of those who watched them and gossiped about them, Deborah and Severus were exceedingly tender in private. On clear nights they slipped away to the astronomy tower with a bottle of fine wine or a bottle of Stolichnaya 100 and a two liter of Squirt or a fifth of Jack Daniels and a six pack of Pepsi (_hey, this is a vampire killer and a Death Eater, they drink the hard stuff too, trust me_) and watched the stars. Other nights they would take walks through the forest, enjoying the cool scent of earth and herbs and the delicious freedom from being watched. Sometimes they would just wander in the gardens and delight in the small comfort of holding hands. The nights Severus loved most were the nights that Deborah would invite him into her quarters to watch videos on the VCR. They played through her limited collection of tapes many times over. Severus would stretch out on the couch using her lap for a pillow while they watched, and on the best nights he could relax enough to melt into a delicious state of calmness as she gently stroked his hair. So wary, so afraid to let his guard down, she mused. It took ages for him to stop flinching when he was touched. He was warm and even funny on the rare occasions that he allowed himself to be soothed into a sense of security. Being with Severus often reminded her of working with basilisks.

_It is impossible to tame a basilisk. None of them will ever call any being master, that would rip against every fiber of a basilisk's nature. A basilisk can and will kill you in an instant, but they are not aggressive creatures at heart. Their powerful fury guards the secret that their greatest strength is also the source of their only weakness-their hunger to be loved. __A basilisk is the bravest of magical creatures and will fight to it's death to protect the ones it loves. But to know a basilisk, you must help it to trust you enough that it will allow itself to love you. It desperately fears being cast aside. A basilisk becomes irrational and vicious if it does not feel loved. If it goes unloved for too long it will die, even if it must bring that death upon itself to find release._


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Minerva McGonagall sipped her tea as Dumbledore closed and secured the office door. He took a seat across from her and poured himself a cup. "I suppose that you have a purpose in asking to meet with me other than to join me in tea. I suspect that it might be in regards to a couple of our wizards."

"Indeed. Albus, I am concerned. Surely you notice that Severus is acting totally out of character. I realize that your cousin and he have many interests in common and that it's natural for a man to notice a woman and enjoy her company but something far different is going on between the two of them. He has been acting as if he is fifteen years old. He's not only acting interested in her, he is acting like a child. They are not just spending time together. They are playing like children. They go up at night and drink on the astronomy tower deck. Argus has found beer cans and cigarette butts up there and Severus has not done anything so irresponsible since sixth year, and even then he had the good sense to cover his tracks better. The children will be coming back in three weeks. What are they going to think when they go up to the astronomy deck to have their illicit parties and find their professor up there with your cousin?"

"He has been having quite a time lately. Minerva. What I am going to tell you now, I tell you in confidence. Cookie?" Dumbledore offered the tray. "These are exceptional cookies, it's a muggle recipe that Deborah brought with her. She made these last night and taught the house elves how to make them. They love her, you know. She treats them like people."

"Every person has their own weaknesses, their chinks in their armor. Severus has his as well. When he was a student here a trivial incident occurred, something that we would typically write off as children's horseplay. It traumatized him deeply, and even though it was something that any other child would be embarrassed about and shrug off, it hit him hard, it struck his greatest vulnerability."

"As you recall, Severus came from a deplorable home. His father was an alcoholic, violent at times. At one point the family services department in the ministry was seriously considering removing him but his mother pleaded to keep him; she made all sorts of promises that she would take better care of him and that it would break her heart if they took him from her. She was of the Prince family, a family with some status, and while they had washed their hands of her they had no desire to see her bring further disgrace upon them by having her child removed for neglect. Severus's grandmother was a very persuasive woman. His mother never made good on any of her promises. He lived a squalid life, neglected, dirty, and frequently abused. He arrived her filthy, smelly, and with no decent clothing or home training. We had to use funds from our student aid fund to clothe him and we had to take him aside to teach him basic manners and hygiene-it was something he simply had never experienced at home."

"Immediately he became an object of ridicule. On the train to Hogwarts other children who came from decent homes began to tease him and bully him. That wasn't right of them but they were children and that is how children act toward someone different. Two of the worst were James Potter and Sirius Black. Severus, being the way he is, fought back and that began a cycle of sniping back and forth." To make it worse, the one friend Severus had was Lily Evans. She was sorted into your house while he was sorted into Slytherin. Lily was outgoing and made friends with her entire house, including James and Sirius. Severus was insanely jealous of them and not very good at hiding it. That encouraged them to pick with him more."

"One day, when James and Sirius were tormenting him, James knocked away his wand and levitated Severus. James then pulled his pants around his ankles and they laughed at him. Now, if you recall, Severus was one of our late bloomers, possibly because he had not been well taken care of-he came here quite malnourished and run down. Most of our other boys matured far earlier than he did. They did not let him forget this either. He also had rather dingy underwear. You know yourself from when room searches have been necessary that this pertains to about ninety percent of our boys and quite a few of our girls because they simply will not sort their clothing for the laundry and the house elves refuse to do it for them. But Severus was not thinking about the rest of the boys with their equally dingy underwear. It happened to him, it was all about him. He was helpless, up there in the air with his grey underwear for all to see, including Lily Evans, and mortified, thinking that they were all laughing at his skinny legs and how underdeveloped he was."

"Lily tried to come to his rescue and stood up to Sirius and James and told them to leave him alone. This hurt his pride even further because she had not only seen him so vulnerable but he felt that she was acting as if he were incapable of defending himself. To his mind it was if she was betraying him. So he lashed out at her and called her the worst thing he could think of to call her, a mudblood."

"Lily was shocked and hurt that her good friend would call her such a thing, especially when she was trying to help him. She was a child herself, and immature, as all of them were. She acted as a hurt child will do and would have nothing to do with him after that. When he tried to apologize, she cut him off and refused to hear him out. A few months later, she began dating James."

"Poor Severus," Minerva shook her head slowly. "With all of the other things he had to overcome, that he lost his only friend. So unfortunate."

"Yes. Because with no other friends, Severus began to mix more with the most undesirable of the Slytherin lot, the ones that ended up following Tom Riddle. It was a pivotal point in his life."

"I understand that, but what does this have to do with his acting out with Deborah?"

"Everything. A part of Severus is frozen at that point in time. Look at how Severus has related to women who are attracted to him for his entire adult life. He shuts them out completely and acts as if he has no interest in their company at all, as he tried to do with Lily after she cut him off."

"My cousin has the gift of empathy. She instinctively experiences what others feel, particularly if she has strong feelings toward them. Without trying to seek it out, she found the one gateway by which to approach Severus. He cannot back her down or make her reject him, no matter how nasty he is to her. She comes right back at him or laughs it off and when he's done being angry she lets him back in. She is not only mature enough to know that his anger is directed at her but not rational, but she also knows that he needs acceptance. She's dealing with him as one deals with a child. She encourages him when he is behaving well and doesn't take it to heart when he lashes out. Severus is not capable of dealing with women as a mature man does. He can only deal with them at his own level, that of a boy who is so afraid of rejection that the very thought of it paralyses him and that the only way he can handle the threat is to cut others off before they cut him off."

"The reason this 'out of character' behavior is becoming apparent to you is because for so long Severus has been very effective at preventing any woman from approaching him by being rude and miserable to them. It's worked well. Most women will simply move on if they are attracted to a man and he behaves as hatefully as Severus does. But Deborah is not threatened at all by him. When he pushes, she pushes back, just as hard, and when he stops acting out it is all over and done and settled and never mentioned again. Her husband was not an easy man to live with, but he was a good man. She is remarkably strong."

"I didn't know she was married. What happened to that?

"He was killed in battle. Her husband was a vampire-it was considered quite shocking. He was a friend of her father's when the vampires and wizards began working together. They fell in love and married with her father's blessing, despite a great deal of outcry in the wizarding community. Ian was literally killed in front of her. He was the commander of the vampires who were fighting a rogue uprising. As his second, she assumed leadership of the vampire forces. That is how she became the only wizard to lead the vampire nation in war. She is a hero to the vampires, a wizard who they hold as one of their own."

"That is amazing and sad. But why is she here trying to 'fix' Severus?"

"She didn't come here to fix Severus. She did not know that Severus existed when I asked her to come, she only knew that I was asking for her help, as a distant relative. Severus just happened to be here. Once she met him I suspect that she was attracted to him because they share some of the same interests and because his behavior piqued her curiosity. But she does have feelings for him. He's not a project, she genuinely cares for him. And now that she does care about him then by design or by instinct she's approaching him on the level he must be approached on."

"I can see that now, but Albus, what is going to happen when the students return? I cannot see the two of them behaving outlandishly when they arrive. It simply wouldn't be acceptable."

"No, it wouldn't. I feel that neither one of them is totally insensitive to appearances. If it becomes a problem I will speak to both of them but I suspect that Severus is unwilling to allow the students to know that much of his personal life, now that he finally has one. Deborah is going to be staying on with us as an assistant professor for the coming term. I've asked her to help with a few classes. She will be teaching some advanced courses. I offered her Defense Against the Dark Arts, but she refused, on the grounds that Severus has been asking for that class for a while now and it wouldn't be right for her to take it. So she will be working with that professor and also we will be adding an adult class in wandmaking, which will in reality be a training class for our own people for the war which we both know is inevitable."

* * *

><p>Deborah sat in Dumbledore's office. "Since I'm going to be staying on at Hogwarts, I'd like to know a little about that item." She indicated the Sorting Hat. "I've heard that it sorts the students into their houses."<p>

"Yes, it does. We place it on a new student's head and the hat tells us where they would be best placed. It's a remarkable magical artifact."

She put her teacup down. "Albus, if I asked the hat, would it tell me which house I would have belonged to if I had come to Hogwarts? I'm just curious. I know that each of your houses has it's own personality and I would love to know where I would have belonged."

"We could try. I've never known of it to have been done and now that you have mentioned it, I am curious myself." Albus retrieved the hat from it's shelf.

At that moment, there was a knock at the door. Severus entered and said "Pardon me, I didn't know that you were busy. I need to speak to you later at your convenience."

"No, come on in, Severus. We're about to conduct an experiment. We're going to see if the sorting hat will sort Deb. This will be interesting. You may wish to see this." Snape took a seat and watched intently.

Albus approached Deborah, who lifted her head straight and squared her shoulders. The hat began to speak.

"This one is not an untried youth. She is brave and protective, and seeks to shield the weak. She would do well in Gryffindor. But she is sly and she will act in less than a noble manner to achieve a noble cause. She is secretive in some ways. She is naturally attracted to dark things. Slytherin would be a good place for her. But she also….."

The hat continued to think of one reason for Slytherin then another for Gryffindor for several minutes. Snape checked the time; the hat had been trying to sort her for nearly ten minutes. Deborah raised her hand, which was silly but somehow felt right. "Sorting hat, may I ask a question?

"It is not the thing that one usually does, but you may ask."

"You seem to feel that I am equally suited to two houses, is that correct?

"That is so."

"Since that is so, would it be appropriate for me to indicate the house that I would feel most at home with?"

"That would be correct."

She thought for a moment. Then she stated, "In that case, I prefer Slytherin."

"Slytherin!" the hat announced.

She handed the hat back to Albus. "I can't be in one of your houses because obviously I am not a student. But it's good to know where I would have been. She looked back at Snape. "What do you think, should I have been a Slytherin?"

"Yes."

Albus patted her on the shoulder. "Imagine, one of my cousins a Slytherin. Who would have thought such a thing? But since you're going to teaching with us this term, this may end up being a blessing. Severus, didn't you tell me that you would prefer not to deal with certain female issues that arise in your house?"

"I did and I would be most grateful if Deborah would handle them. I dread such things." He turned to Deborah, "So, you're going to be teaching?"

"A bit. I'll be assisting in DADA and any other area where a professor requests my assistance, and I'll be teaching an adult class as well. Something new that Albus has thought up. I will leave you two now, but he can fill you in." She turned to Dumbledore. " Thank you for the tea, cousin, and for the use of the sorting hat. It was fascinating."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8.

In the middle of the afternoon, Snape heard a tapping at his window. He pushed it open and a large crow flitted to his desk and turned to face him. "Personal message from Deborah Jenkins to Severus Snape."

"Go on."

"Personal message from Deborah Jenkins to Severus Snape. I hope that you don't mind a change of plans tonight. An old friend of mine was passing through and got in touch with me. I told him that English wizards haven't seen vampire wanding. We're hoping that you'll join us in the Room of Necessity around seven tonight to see some of the techniques we use back home. He is going to have supper before he comes, haha. So don't worry on that account. I'm going to grab something from the kitchen around six if you want to catch me then. Reuben is only here for one night, but we're going to show you at least one thing that will knock your socks off. I can't wait to see you, hey, send me an owl."

Raucous Crow flitted to the windowsill, turned and looked back at Severus over his shoulder, then flew away.

A half hour later a dark owl tapped at the window of Deborah's quarters. It dropped a cream colored envelope decorated with faint tracings of black, silver, and green.

_Dear Deborah,_

_I was pleasantly surprised to see your crow today. Of course I'd like to meet your friend and get my socks knocked off. (I think)_

_If you say Reuben is safe then it's fine with me. You know that I trust your judgment in this. I'll see you at six. Now, do I have to not eat anything with garlic before I meet him? I'm being serious, I have no idea! Quit laughing at me or I will hex you severely!_

_Severus_

* * *

><p>"OK, the lowdown on why American vampires are different that the ones here. It's purely cultural. All of our oldest vampires come from Europe. They moved to the New World, looked around, figured out that with a few changes and a tweak here and there they could get a nice little thing going. They're respectable in our magical community. They think worse of the English bunch than you do."<p>

"So let me see if I have this straight in my mind. American vampires are civilized, have some kind of unwritten code that they are not to kill their victims when they feed, they walk around in the daylight, and they use wands. Is that correct?"

"Pretty much. The reason vampires avoid the sun is not what most people think. A vampire's pupils are permanently dilated. You know how you feel if you wake up and open your eyes and the room is bright or if you stare up at the sun? A vampire's eyes are like that all of the time, they are incredibly sensitive to light. With the right contact lenses they can be out in the daylight with everyone else. I don't know what is up with the English ones. The joke in America is that they hide most of the time because if a dog finds them he'll roll on them and if a cat finds them it will cover them over."

"Our vampires only started using wands in the last ten years or so. It was a development from the war. They knew that they had magical powers but until they got quad cores most of the ones who played around with wands ended up blowing themselves up. Their brand of magic is radically different from ours. They have almost no control naturally but a huge output of force."

"So, how they ever start getting involved with wizards?"

"It was during the first vampire war, which started essentially as the greater portion of the community dealing with a substantial number of outlaws. Some vampires were indiscriminately slaughtering people. There will always be a few like that and usually they can shuffle things around to make it look like a serial killer, like they did here with Jack the Ripper. But the attacks increased dramatically every year and the community couldn't cover for them any more. The vampires as a rule don't care much about victims one way or another, but their community was in grave danger of being exposed and it risked the safety of the greater magical community as well. You know what can happen when a witch hunt gets underway. Historically the non-magicals end up killing more of each other than they do of us, but it's still not something any of us can afford to see return."

Snape thought back to what little he had learned of the foreign wars. "They really don't teach much about it here and what they do teach is something like three or four pages in the third or fourth year."

"My father was one of the first to be contacted. Our family and friends joined with them to kill off the outlaws because it's much easier to kill a vampire with a wand than any of the other ways. As it ended up, most of the troublemakers were destroyed, the few that hadn't been killed went underground, and the vampire and wizarding communities began to interact on a less limited basis. By the third war, the wizards had begun working with quad cores to outfit the vampire allies. A vampire quad core is way different than the one you have, I'll show you one the next time I make one. The guy you're meeting tonight is one of the first vampires to make contact to ask for help. His name is Reuben Grey, he was a friend of my father's and he's like a brother to me. There is no way I can tell you about the wars in one decade, let alone one hour, but I'll fill you in more later if you want to know anything else. Let's head on up to the Room of Necessity and you can meet Reuben."

* * *

><p>Severus studied the vampire as they approached. Nothing about him screamed vampire. He looked like any normal muggle or wizard. He had longish medium brown hair. He wore a leather biker jacket, dark jeans, and a chambray shirt. Biker boots. A laid back casual slouchy posture made him look bored. All except for the eyes. Unreadable black eyes that never glanced away, he never even seemed to blink. There was no demarcation between iris and pupil, only pure obsidian black, like a snake's eyes.<p>

Deborah ran to the vampire who grabbed her up into a hug, lifted her off her feet, and went into a spin while they both laughed. She hooked her arm into his and led him forward. "Reuben, I'd like you to meet Severus Snape. Severus, this is Reuben Grey, an old friend of the family."

They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. Snape was a little thrown by the handshake, he was expecting the vampire to be ice cold but the hand felt warm and normal in his. "Come on, let's get inside and ward these doors or everyone will want to be in here. You know how they are around here. Nosey lot," she told Reuben.

"Severus, Deb and I are going to demonstrate something to you that you might not think possible." Reuben smiled, and again held his gaze with those dark unreadable eyes. "Hold on to your seat." He turned and called back, "Ready, little Sister?"

Deborah and Reuben took their positions. They approached each other and bowed deeply. Classical form, Snape thought. They drew wands and presented them in a salute. They turned crisply and stood back to back then each paced to his appointed end of the room. They spun around and faced each other.

"Avada kedavra!"

Green crackling energy snaked from both wands. Deborah and Reuben were each enveloped in a nimbus of sickly green glow. Brighter pieces of the glow broke off and crawled over their bodies like worms. A sulphurous choking stench filled the room. Greenish yellow flames flickered at their feet. Severus froze with the shock of seeing the killing curse used in a friendly duel. The popping sounds slowly died down, the green plasma dissipated. The combatants walked up and started brushing the last shreds of energy off of each other. Reuben turned to Severus and grinned. "Ever see anything like that before? If it can't transfer the killing energy to your body it crawls around on you like snakes."

Severus bent and reached out toward a silky wisp of residual light. Deborah kicked it away. "Don't touch that stuff, Sev, you're not blocked! That tiny bit could have you bent over vomiting blood for a week!"

Reuben tapped his shoulder. "Want to see us do the cruciatus block next?"

* * *

><p>They had seen Reuben off, and while Snape had never believed the foolishness that vampires turned into a bat, he was very surprised to see one disapparate. "I never really thought of them as magical before. I always figured that it was something like a disease."<p>

"If you value your own hide, never let a vampire hear you say that." she chuckled. "

"So there really are no unforgivable curses in America? Anything goes?" Snape drank his coffee, not really enjoying it. He preferred tea but didn't feel like making it and there was still coffee in the kitchen. Deborah sipped at a soda.

"There are no unforgivable curses, only outcomes that are inappropriate to the situation. No one would bat an eye about a woman cast avada kedavra against someone who was trying to rape her. It would be overkill if it were used for spite or for a trivial offense and the consequences would be set according to the degree in which it was inappropriate. There are no formal courts. Justice gets served by whichever of the knights happens to be convenient."

"We don't have any sort of jail like Azkaban either. Some matters are settled by restitution. In some cases we tell folks to just go duel it out and whoever lives wins, particularly if they are quarreling over something stupid. Most of them find another way to settle it, which is why we send them off to duel in the first place. If someone has done something utterly intolerable, we execute them. If someone habitually abuses magic but they haven't actually committed a killing crime or they do something terrible but not worthy of death, they can be extinguished. That isn't the same as dying. That means that their magical abilities are destroyed. They become the same as a squib. Also, criminal cases aside if someone is so mentally impaired or senile that their magic presents a danger to themselves or others they are often extinguished, not as a punishment but as a protection."

"There is a way to do that? How?"

"It's a specific curse that in America is only taught to people in the knights. Many people have tried to cast it but to do so you have to know both parts of the curse. One is spoken, but the other one is only thought before casting. That way unauthorized people can't learn it as easily and cast it without just cause."

"Can it be taken off?"

"No wizard has even been able to reverse the extinguishing curse. I'm surprised that you didn't know about it. Your Unspeakables have known about it for years-we taught them how to do it. They must be keeping that one close to the vest. In America, we want everyone to know about it. Knowing that it is possible encourages better self control."

They talked on for a while. Deborah outlined the basics of how to block the avada kedavra curse and the cruciatus. Cruciatus seemed fairly simple to Severus as it was a slight variation on another blocking technique. Avada kedavra blocking, as he discovered, took a great deal more finesse. It involved using not only a complex blocking spell but also the caster cursing himself using a special curse with no ill effects as a block. "It isn't so much difficult as it is that it takes a bit of practice to be able to perform, and you damn well better get it right every time." She promised to start teaching him how to use the blocking technique whenever he wanted to begin. "With the kind of work my cousin Albus is pushing off on you, it is not a bad thing for you to know." Severus wondered, as had done several times before, if Deborah was representative of American wizards. She was always throwing out something surprising, something advanced.

* * *

><p>An owl tapped at Deborah's window bearing a note on familiar stationery.<p>

_Deborah,_

_I know that it's late and I told my owl not to wake you if you were sleeping. _

_Would you mind if I apparate up for a few minutes? I can't sleep._

_I've got a bottle of Dewars White Label stashed somewhere in this room and if I can manage to find it do you want me to bring it with me?_

_Severus_

Several minutes later a crow tapped at Snape's window. When Severus let the bird in, Raucous Crow asked, "Dude, do you have any idea of what time of the night it is? I had to haul ass out off my perch for this!" Raucous Crow flitted to the desk and turned and waited until he was given his order to speak.

"Personal message for Severus Snape from Deborah Jenkins. Sure, come on up. The uniform of the day is pajamas. I can't sleep either and I feel like talking. Bring the Dewars if you want to. I'm not in the mood for scotch myself. I have Stolleys and orange juice here and I can throw together some screwdrivers for us if you would rather have that or if you can't find the bottle of Dewars tucked under your winter sheets in the left hand bottom drawer of your bureau, the one you keep your broom behind and yes, I really am that good."

* * *

><p>They lay in her bed holding each other. The fire had burned down to occasionally flickering coals but the down comforter kept them warm.<p>

_Do you think it's odd for us to be hanging out in your bed like this?_

_It's really not that odd. It makes it easier to communicate this way. The closer you are the louder you broadcast and the better you receive. Another big plus is that you make a terrific bedwarmer._

_I'll take that as a compliment. It's strange how much easier it is to talk when you don't have to say anything out loud. _

_Uh huh. I still like the idea you had about sticking the magical painting in the cupboard. Those damned things can never keep their mouths shut and they like to add too much to the story. We're just talking, but by the time a magical painting got through with it... you know how that goes._

_Sticking the magical painting in the cupboard wasn't my original idea. That is a Hogwarts tradition. Haven't you heard the story about when someone was drunk and stuck the magical painting in the men's loo during a beer party? The next day the magical paintings in the girls dorms were telling all of the girls who did and did not measure up._

_Do you think that really ever happened?_

_I do. I've had a few slipups with magical portraits. __Deb, how do you feel about me?_

_That came out of the blue. I feel a whole lot of different ways about you. _

_Such as?_

_I like the way you look. I've kinda liked you since the day you picked me up at the train station. You were so comical standing there with shocked with your mouth hanging open.__ I could feel how pissed off you were at Albus for using you like a chauffeur and for springing his little surprise about me being a female on you. And how you were trying to figure out how I knew about you frying that rat. It never occurred to you that you were telling me all about it._

_I never realized that my discomfort could be so attractive to women._

_I like those little snarky expressions of yours. Like when you roll your eyes and act like no one in the entire history of the world has ever been so treated so poorly when anything little happens, like you did tonight when the house elf brought you a fork with a water spot. Oh, and I like the way you argue. Remember that night in the Potions lab, when everyone thought that they were going to have to rescue us from each other?_

_I'm glad to hear that one of us was having a good time that night. Bagpipes. That should make the apex of the Unforgivable list. Do you know how infuriating you can be sometimes?_

_Of course. I don't get infuriated with you, though. I think that you're funny when you're mad. And cute._

_Oh god, cute. The kiss of death for any man's ego. I am never cute._

_That sounded so cute. What exactly is it that you want to know?_

_I'm not entirely sure. Maybe how well you think that you know me._

_I don't think that you want to know my answer._

_And you believe yourself to be qualified to know that. You know practically nothing of me._

_You would be very surprised. I'm an empath, I can experience what you think and feel even deeper than conscious thought. You have seriously underestimated just how much an empath is capable of._

_I know about how your father drank and beat the shit out of you. I know about how your mother blamed you for the lifestyle she chose to live and took it out on you. I know that neither one of them took good care of you because they were wrapped up in their own self pity. I know that they dressed you poorly and didn't much care what happened to you and that kids made fun of you because of how you were dressed and because you were never clean. I know about how you fell in love with Lily Evans, and how could you not? She was the only good and gentle person in your life. I know about the way the marauders ganged up on you and tormented you. I know about Lily choosing James over you-she did love you but not the same way you loved her. I know about the grey underpants thing and the real reason that you were so upset was because you had a late puberty and how humiliated you felt because you still had a boy's body and the mauraders had already changed. I know about the way you slipped away and cried after you called Lily a mudblood. I know about Lily refusing to hear your apology, and she was just a kid too so she can't be blamed for that either. No, you are not leaving now. _

_I know about your so called Dark Lord. I met that sadistic bastard when I was a teenager and he tried to sell that pureblood crap in America and got sent packing. I know of the dark mark and the other things he has done to you as well. He can't resist the opportunity to humiliate and torment, not even his own people. I feel how your skin crawls when you look at that mark on your body and how it turns your stomach and makes you wish that you could carve it off of your arm. I know that one of the reasons you have avoided being intimate with women is because you can't stand to have that brand seen. I know about how you blame yourself for James and Lily's deaths and that is a crock of shit, Severus. Wormtail and Tom Riddle did them in. Even if it had been true you were a only kid that wasn't quite a man yet and you were angry and in pain. Yes, I know that you're a Death Eater and that all of the stupid choices you made when you were not much more than a kid haunt you to this very day. _

_I know that for years you've carried on a pathological sort of emotional masturbation over a relationship with Lily Evans that never happened and never could have happened and that it's driven you to do crazy irrational things and to hurt yourself terribly. Albus didn't tell me this stuff. I'm not using my abilities to dig into your mind. These are things that you practically scream out over and over again, each and every day. Most people just aren't capable of hearing it, they can only see how cruel and pissed off and frustrated it makes you and how you lash out for no reason that is apparent to them and that makes them think that you're some sort of a monster. _

_You're not a monster but you act like one. You are so sure that every person you meet will despise you if know your secrets that you put up walls so nobody will get close enough to care about you. You run everyone off and call that being strong. A skunk can accomplish the same, that is not being strong. It's about as stupid as punching yourself in your own nuts so someone else can't do it to you first. Yes, that is an accurate analogy. You do not deserve the abuse you have gotten, especially what you're doing to hurt yourself. Most of the terrible choices you made were made by a lonely abused kid trying to make himself powerful because that was the only way he thought that he could be important or safe. Don't turn away, let me hold you. _

_I can see that you're on emotional overload right now. I'm not going to push you any more and I'm not going to laugh at you because you're starting to tear up. Sev, I wish there was some way I could pull out my wand and miracle away the wretched way you feel all the time and how you feel now. You rarely feel good. __I can feel that you are feeling sick to your stomach because you're upset. That will pass. I'm going to lie here and hold you and stroke your hair. That always helps to calm you. Take deep breaths. I know it hurts now, but it's going to get better. I'm going to cast a relaxing spell on you. This will help you feel a little bit better. It's alright to cry, baby, that is what people do when they hurt as badly as you do. Roll all the way onto your stomach. No, you don't have to try to act like you're not crying, just let it happen, crying doesn't mean that you're weak, all it means is that you are hurting. Lift up a little so I can pull your pajama top up. I'm going to rub your back, that will help you relax a little bit so you can rest. Deep breaths, take slow deep breaths. I'm going to see if I can get a little of the tightness out of your neck and shoulders. _

_Severus, you've spent your whole life trying not to get hurt any more than you already have been, trying to prove that your worth, and pushing people away because that is the way you think you can survive and it's time you do more than just survive-you deserve a great deal more than that. Everyone in life is not going to reject you. Now rest. I'll be here with you when you fall asleep and I'm going to be right beside you holding you all night. I'm going to cast some spells to over you against the nightmares. Rest, Severus. I know more about you than you think I do and it's not making me despise you. I see you. You have misjudged yourself and misjudged what others would think of you if you let them know you. This is all too intense for you now, you need to get some rest and think about it later when you're not so upset. I'll let you decide when. For now, you need to get some sleep._


	9. Chapter 9

Pureblood Chapter 9.

The first thing he became aware of was warmth. He shifted himself deeper into the feather tick. The brightness told him that it was daylight without even opening his eyes, and he felt no desire to do so. He was so comfortable and at peace. He almost never slept soundly, and he wanted to enjoy the luxury of feeling well rested. He could hear faint insect and bird sounds from outside the window. Sometime early in the morning Deborah must have gotten up and opened it a couple of inches because he could smell cut grass and more faintly, roses. There was a bowl of dried herbs on her dresser, and he could also smell cinnamon, oranges, and something lemony. Balm, perhaps, or lemongrass? He smiled to himself. So perfect. A cool breeze from the window felt wonderful on his face.

She was using his shoulder for a pillow, one of her arms lay across his chest. How does anyone ever get tired of this? he wondered. Feeling Deborah's breath on his neck, the weight of her arm on his body-it was an incredible sensation. The ordinary experience of waking up with someone who cared about him was so foreign. Every slight shift of her body brought an exquisite sense of closeness. He had been so starved for touch for so long. Her bent knee lay slightly on top of one of his thighs. The degree of pleasure he was feeling from this small intimacy astounded him.

And then the memory of the night returned, and his face began to burn with mortification. He had been exposed, more exposed that if he had been stripped and kicked into the hall. She knew his disgusting secrets. How many more wretched things had she discovered but not mentioned? She had witnessed him bawling like a four year old. She had looked at his feelings toward Lily and called them a sick obsession with a dead woman that didn't want him. Emotional masturbation. It was a poisonous accusation, poisonous because at his core he knew that it reeked of truth. She must view him as some sort of pervert or as mentally ill. Maybe he was. She knew about the Death Eaters and would know of all of their vile amusements. She could probably picture his unwilling participation-no, she was an empath, she surely could. Fresh shame washed over him.

He would not be able to meet her eyes or to make small talk or be near her, knowing the repulsive things that she knew about him. It was too terrible to even think about what she was going to say to him when she woke. Last night, even communicated by thought, her words had said stung like the lash of a scourge, stung because they were true. He despised himself for acting like a coward but he could not bear the humiliation of facing her. He lay quietly, feigning sleep, until she went into the bathroom and he heard the tub being filled. And then Severus fled.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10.

Deborah felt him leaving, even as he slipped away. She had known he would, she was an empath. His feelings had been left raw, too tender to risk her bringing painful subjects up to him, even though she would not have. What Snape needed now was the security of being alone and far away from one who had seen him as plainly as she had.

The first to notice that he was avoiding Deborah were the house elves. For two days straight Snape had been having all of his meals delivered to his room, unprecedented behavior from him. House elves rarely bring such concerns to those they serve; indeed it would be a disloyalty to mention one wizard's unusual behavior to a witch or another wizard. They made an exception for Deborah, though, as she was in the habit of buying them peppermints and butterscotch buttons. There are no house elves in America after all, and like foreigners and muggleborns who had not grown up around them she had not been raised taking their services for granted or thinking that it was perfectly fine to be unkind to them. She found them enchanting. They repaid her small and unexpected kindnesses with extreme devotion.

Deborah was in the kitchen getting herself a cup of tea in the wee hours of the morning two days into Snape's avoidance of her. A small elf named Hoople was watching her, desperately fighting the urge to pour the tea for her because she preferred to do it herself. He was an outspoken little fellow, sometimes too outspoken, but Deborah didn't mind. After all, he was her favorite. He didn't care about Snape but he did care for Deborah and knew that until recently she had enjoyed his company.

"Severus Snape does not eat with Deborah Jenkins now. He has not left his room for two days. Is Severus Snape ill? Should Hoople get a healer for him?"

"There are many reasons that Severus Snape might need to stay in his room, Hoople. School will start up again in a couple of weeks and there is much to be done."

"Severus Snape looks sad. He doesn't eat very much of the food we take him. He lays on his bed and doesn't get up."

"Severus Snape is a grown man who is capable of attending to his own business. The best thing that could be done for him is for others to let him be. Let's let Severus Snape tell us if something is wrong and he needs our help." The elf looked at her quizzically. "Hoople, sometimes people need to be alone to think. They are not like house elves. People need some time by themselves, and sometimes people think that if you want to help them it is because you think that they are weak." She produced a handful of peppermints for the elf and Severus Snape was totally forgotten as the little elf sat close to her and savored the sweet candy.

Many times daily, Deborah was approached asking for information about what was going on with Professor Snape. Her advice was inevitably to knock on his door and ask him if they had any concerns for his welfare. None really wanted to ask Snape about his personal business and risk his infamous ire. So they did the next best thing, they came up with some miscellaneous and conflicting rumors. She really didn't care. She knew that Severus needed some time to think and that he was probably still too embarrassed to be around with her. She was perfectly fine with giving him the comfort of his privacy.

Snape, in the meantime, was growing restive in his self-imposed confinement. There is only so much to see and do within one's quarters; without distractions the very thing one wishes to avoid thinking of comes more frequently to mind. The anti apparition spells would be recast soon since the school year was about to start and he would have to travel by the halls or by the flue soon and he hated the dirty spider filled flues. When he decided to start avoiding Deborah he hadn't thought about how he was going to manage to avoid her long term. He had merely wanted to flee from seeing her and feeling humiliated. Now he was getting several messages owled to him daily, asking if he was ill, asking if there were something wrong. He paced in his rooms. He tried to sleep but his sleep was broken and did not refresh him.

Deborah, on the other hand, was finding plenty to keep her busy. In the staff dining area one evening she mentioned that no one used brooms in America unless they were doing some sort of historical presentation. She had never even been on a broom. Wouldn't have the first idea of how to fly one.

This simply would not do. One must have a broom-it would be outlandish not to have one. Off to Diagon Alley they went and back they came, Deborah carrying her brand new broom. An impromptu committee was formed to teach her how to fly the traditional way.

Snape had reached the point he could no longer tolerate exile. He was in the library, reading next to a window for better light when laughter disturbed him. He scowled and looked out to see several staff members clustered below on the ground. Hagrid, of all people, was seated astride a broom about fifty feet off the ground, and Deborah was hanging for dear life from a broom a few feet under him. He moved down far enough to help right her, a position she maintained for all of five seconds before flipping back around. She was laughing as hard as the rest. She tried to get upright again. Instead, the broom swung back and forth. An hour or so later she was at least staying upright part of the time. Severus was drawn back to the window many times to watch the flying lesson. A few times he even smiled slightly. He missed her, but he still couldn't bear to face her.

From that day on, nearly every day Snape would watch her practice her flying. She truly was not good at it. She had no balance and no control. Many times watching her just trying to get onto the broom would force him to stifle a laugh. Even with her dogged persistence, it was plain to see that flying on a broom would never be something she would excel at. She probably would never be competent. But it was entertaining to watch.

The Thursday before the students were to arrive, Snape was sitting in the library when he thought that out of the corner of his eye he saw something fly far too close to the window. An instant later he heard a loud snap and a thud. He ran to the window and saw Deborah lying on the ground, many feet below. He took off running, nearly tripping down the steps in his haste. She was crumpled near the stone wall of the castle, splintered pieces of her broom around her. She must have flown straight into the stone, he thought. He called her name and she didn't respond. Blood was beginning to run from her nose, her ears, her mouth. One leg was surely broken, one arm looked crushed. Snape shook her and screamed her name over and over. There was no response. She barely seemed to breathe.

He picked her up from the ground and ran with her to the hospital wing. He nearly knocked Madam Pomfrey over running through the door. "Over here, Professor Snape," the nurse said, indicating a bed. He placed Deborah in it, trying to straighten out her body as he did. She felt limp in his arms, and he could feel the sickening grate and crunch of broken bones as he lay her down. He felt out of breath and helpless.

"Severus, what happened?" Albus entered swiftly.

"She was out flying on that damned broom of hers and flew right into the side of the castle! She's doesn't know how to fly, she's only been doing it for a few days and she lost control!" Snape then went into a dissertation on bad flying instruction, broom wasn't suitable, etc. He got in Madam Pomfey's way several times and kept asking questions despite being told to wait for her to check the patient out. Albus pulled him aside to some chairs on the other end of the room. He's babbling and nearly hysterical, Albus thought. I'll take care of him so that Poppy can have a chance to work on her.

Taking care of Snape proved to be more of a challenge than taking care of Deborah. Her broken bones were quickly fixed, the other injuries looked far worse than they actually were. She was quickly set into good order. Albus, on the other hand, had to try to distract Severus and keep him far enough away that she could work. He would not be easily redirected.

Snape became increasingly anxious. He continued to bombard the healer with questions. He wanted experts brought in. He demanded to know the name of each potion, how old it was, who made it, why that one was used, and why there wasn't a better one. He suggested a myriad of potions that he could retrieve from his lab at a moment's notice. Although usually very tolerant of those who were upset at a loved one's injuries, Snape eventually tried the patience of the nurse to the point of snapping. She announced that he was not permitted to remain in the hospital ward unless he took a hefty dose of a calming potion. He insisted he didn't need any calming potion in a voice that was starting to rise and crack.

Albus drew him aside and quietly but firmly insisted that he take it. When one dose didn't have the desired effect, Albus persuaded him take another. Then another. Finally, the effects began to manifest. He was still worried to distraction but lower key and less frantic. He didn't interfere as much. Madam Pomfrey said that other than a few broken bones that were still knitting Deborah's injuries were healed and a good night's rest was all that she needed; enough time for the skeleton mending potion to finish working. Snape insisted on keeping a bedside vigil and the healer instructed him that if he could control himself he would be permitted to stay in the hospital wing with her overnight. He pulled up a chair at her bedside until he was at the edge of the bed and watched her intently. The house elves brought him a tray which went untouched. He rubbed his eyes, reddened by several nights of poor sleep and now by stress as well.

He used the opportunity to take a really good look at Deborah, now that she wouldn't think worse of him for staring. She was short, even shorter than he had seemed to him. He made an estimate that she might go 155 centimeters, and it was a remarkably accurate guess. Her skin was naturally darker than his or perhaps she had a tan. He held his hand up to her face and noted the contrast. She had a thin upper lip but a generous lower one. Her nose was small and had a slight bump, as if it had been broken at some time, and knowing her, it was likely. She had broad shoulders for her height, giving an impression of being compact but powerful. She was the antithesis of the type of woman he had always found attractive, Deborah was not tall, willowy, and delicate with red or blonde hair and porcelain skin. But his heart felt so much lighter now that he was seeing her and so close again. After looking around the ward and determining that he was not being observed, he leaned forward and kissed her lips.

Sometime during the night he dozed off, slumping forward in his chair and resting his crossed arms on her bed and his head on her chest. A little before dawn he woke to the relaxing bliss of being held and having his hair softly stroked. Deborah raised her head from the pillow, turned slightly and kissed his forehead; he muttered something incomprehensible and within seconds the residual effects of a triple dose of the calming potion drew him back into his slumber. As morning broke across the sky Madam Pomfrey made her rounds and found Deborah awake, holding a sleeping Snape and stroking his hair. Poppy grinned. A whispered consultation with the actual patient told her that her recovery was complete. "I think we're going to have to trade places," Deborah whispered, pointing at him. "You must have given him something mighty strong because he is totally knocked out. Was he acting that badly?"

Poppy nodded and smiled broadly. "You have no idea," she whispered. "Simply awful." She left, returned with a blanket, and tucked it around Snape.

Albus arrived an hour later with a sack of chocolate frogs and licorice whips in hand, come to check on Deborah. Deborah put her finger to her lips to warn him to be silent. Snape was still sleeping with his head on her chest. Hoople, the house elf, had taken up his station sitting cross-legged at her feet, her self appointed guardian. Albus raised his eyebrows in mock surprise at the sight. Deborah continued to stroke Snape's hair and smiled, ruffling it gently then smoothing it. He grunted softly and snuggled. Albus rolled his eyes, patted his cousin's shoulder, then left in an exaggerated tip-toe step. Deborah snickered and hugged Snape gently. He snuggled against her a little more. Hoople unwrapped a chocolate frog for her then one for himself and both elf and wizard enjoyed a candy as Severus slumbered. All was well in their little corner of the world.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11.

Snape woke in somewhat unfamiliar surroundings. By the position of the sun in the window he guessed that it was nearly noon. He glanced around and…he was in the hospital ward. Lying in a bed, the very bed that Deborah had occupied. There was no sign of her. His coat was neatly folded on the visitor's chair, next to his shoes. "Does Severus Snape need anything?" He turned in the direction of the sound and saw a house elf sitting at the foot of the bed. "Deborah Jenkins put Severus Snape to bed this morning took off his shoes and coat and told Hoople to stay with Severus Snape and make sure that he is safe and doesn't fall out of bed or get hurt while she goes shopping. Deborah Jenkins said that Severus Snape drank too much calming potion yesterday."

"No, Albus Dumbledore poisoned Severus Snape with too much of the damned calming potion. Shit! I'm talking like a house elf now! Went shopping? She is insane! She nearly killed herself yesterday! What could she possibly need that urgently?" Snape was pulling his shoes on, muttering to himself. The house elf misinterpreted this as a question addressed to him.

"Deborah Jenkins says that she needs to replace the broom that she broke yesterday. She went to Diagon Alley to buy another one."

Snape cursed vehemently. He put his coat on, managing to get many of the buttons in the correct buttonholes. He hurried to his room, briefly considered taking a shower and changing clothes, then opted for a whore's shower (anointing himself with a goodly quantity of cologne) and jumped in the chimney with a handful of floo powder and headed for the broom shop.

She was not there, nor had she been there yet. Great, he thought, the woman was on death's door last night and today she decided to go shopping and I have no clue where to find her. Something tugged at his coat. Hoople. "Does Severus Snape need to find Deborah Jenkins? She is at Ollivander's Wand Shop."

Snape walked briskly to the shop, followed closely by the house elf. "Why are you following me?" he snarled at the elf.

The house elf cowered. "Deborah Jenkins asked for Hoople to watch over Severus Snape and make sure he stays safe because he took too much calming potion yesterday."

It took Snape a few seconds to process the information. "Bloody hell! She almost kills herself one day and the next day she skips off to town and sets her loathsome little minion to nursemaid me!" He headed for the wand shop, dutifully trailed by the house elf.

"Severus! What a surprise. What is this-do you have a house elf now?" Lucius Malfoy greeted him as he strolled with his wife.

"Deborah Jenkins told Hoople to watch over Severus Snape and make sure he stays safe because he drank too much calming potion yesterday," the elf explained.

"Leave!" Snape thundered. The elf cringed but stayed.

"Oh, Severus, this is rich!" Malfoy laughed. "The lady has given you a sitter. You must bring her over and introduce us sometime. I'd like to meet the witch who thinks you need a keeper."

"If I don't kill her first, Snape growled." He resumed his walk toward Ollivander's shop. The little elf trotted at his heels, to Snape's growing disgust.

When he got to Ollivander's, he found Deborah sitting on a crate chatting with the owner, having a cup of tea. She smiled at Severus. "You woke up! Please, join us."

"Yes, Professor Snape, do sit down." Garrick Ollivander indicated a crate next to Deborah. "I'll get you a cup for some tea, be right back."

"Call your house elf off now," Snape hissed as Deborah rebuttoned his coat. "It's humiliating when a house elf keeps announcing that it's your protector!"

"Hoople, Deborah Jenkins does not need for you to protect Severus Snape for her any more. Thank you." Snape shot her and extremely dirty look, which she ignored. She hugged the little elf, which nearly made Snape gag.

Ollivander returned with a cup and poured tea for Snape. Turning back to Deborah, he said "Now, let me see that heirloom wand you were talking about."

Deborah pulled out the unusual wand she had used when she had dueled with Snape. The wood looked incredibly old, with tiny splits in places. It was slightly bowed.

Ollivander held it lightly, with a rapt expression of wonder on his face. He rolled it and carefully inspected the wood, held it vertically and felt the energies it produced. "This is authentic! This is really your family heirloom?"

"Yes. She was an ancestor of mine. It's been handed down through many generations of my family. The last one to use it before I did was my father's mother. It doesn't work very well for men. It's picky about which women it will work for as well."

"I am amazed that this still exists. Have you ever seen anything like it?" He handed the wand to Snape.

Severus turned the wand over in his hand. It felt small, fragile, thinner than most wands, even witch's wands. The wood was stained and worn smooth by long use. "I don't have enough knowledge of these things to understand the significance of this. It looks very old and it's unusually light, but that is all that I can make of it."

Ollivander took the slender wand back and ran his fingers the length of it, almost lovingly. "This is an amazing piece of history. This wand was the wand of Morgaine la Fey. Half witch, half fairy. It's simply amazing that this has survived the centuries."

"You're descended from Morgaine la Fey?" Snape asked Deborah.

"I am, and so is probably at least half of humanity. Likely you too. It's like Merlin-just about everyone is descended from Merlin, most people don't know that they are. The only difference is that my father's family has always been huge on record keeping and bloodlines and that sort of thing, so we know who our ancestors were. It's one of those things that makes no practical sense, but it's fun to know where you came from, or it is for me anyway. I'm descended from witches, wizards, shamans, at least one fairy, and sundry other magical beings, many of them no good at all. It's a pastime. My brother and I research genealogy for fun."

Ollivander handed her the wand and she returned it to her sleeve. She pulled out another, the one Snape recognized as her quad core. She handed it to Ollivander. "My, yes, I've recently heard of these. What is this one made of? The wood is unfamiliar."

"This is made of black locust wood. It is a excellent concentrator of energy, it produces a tighter pattern even as a single core. The outliers, the parts that direct the energy are Pegasus mane hairs. The core is basilisk feather shaft."

"Basilisk! That is highly unusual! I have never even seen a basilisk feather. Do you have problems with control?"

"Only self control." She smiled. The outliers do most of the controlling for me. I tend to have good energy control so I don't need a super strong outlier. But I don't hit all that hard so basilisk gives me the heavy duty kick I need."

Snape pulled his quad out of his sleeve and handed it to Ollivander. "This is the one that Deb and I made together so she could show me how to do it."

Ollivander rolled the wand in his hand. "Excellent, amazing for a first effort, Professor. It has the same wood, but the energies are different. Pegasus core, maybe?" Snape nodded confirmation. "What are the outliers?" Severus looked toward Deborah, he didn't know himself.

"Thestral tail hair." she said. "They compress the scatter and focus it so tightly that they can give almost surgical precision. Severus hits hard but has a good deal of scatter and the thestral tail hair is one of the best for controlling scatter. There is only one thing stronger-manticore-but he really didn't need that much control. Thestral was actually overkill. With quads, they have to be built to order. They're more tricky to use than a single core to begin with, if they're not balanced they are extremely dangerous."

A few more minutes of talk about the technical aspects of wands ensued, which sounded to Severus like so much "blah, blah, wand, blah blah core blah blah blah blah." Deborah finally made the announcement that they had shopping to do and they were off.

The business at broom shop didn't take very long. She didn't know anything about them and let Snape pick one out for her. She paid for the broom and arranged to have it delivered to Hogwarts. They left and started walking along the street, no particular destination in mind. She stopped him for a moment.

"I need to thank you for taking me up to the medical wing yesterday. I don't remember much except that I woke up that night in a hospital bed and you were sitting there." She took his hand and held it in hers. "I must have given you quite a shock."

"I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I saw you fly by the window then I heard a cracking sound and a thud. I thought you were dead when I looked out the window and saw you on the ground. When I got down and you weren't moving..." He looked down at his feet. "Deb, I've missed you. I shouldn't have taken off like I did."

She freed her hands and put an arm around his waist and held him as they resumed their walk. His arm draped over her shoulders. "Sev, I expected that you would need some distance for a while after that night. I'm not angry at you. You needed your privacy. If I thought that you were merely being rude I would have gone on down to the Slytherin dungeon and found you. I'm not exactly shy that way."

"I'll say you're not." he snorted. "I figured that out the first night you came down into the dungeon looking for something out of the stores. Most people are easy to scare off."

"That seems so odd to me. I never got any sort of vibes about you being bad news, or dangerous, or anything like that. I got just the opposite. Like if all hell broke loose the best place for me to head would be down to that dungeon. I got the impression that you're one of those 'save the world' type guys, even though you'd probably bitch the whole time you were doing it."

He laughed. "I don't know about saving the world, but I've been accused of being bitchy and worse. Much worse. I have a portfolio of confiscated 'Professor Snape' artwork. Some of it depicts me performing acts which I frankly think are impossible."

"The good farmer is held in low regard by the rats in his grainery."

"I'm going to remember that one. I should get out my calligraphy quills and make myself a little parchment for the potions classroom wall."

"Or, I could make you one with my Sharpies."

"Or you could come with me and we can get something to eat. Have you been in the Three Broomsticks yet?"

"No, never heard of it." she said. "What is it?"

"A pub. I'll buy us lunch." He offered his arm and she took it.

* * *

><p>"This place makes a good hamburger, but I think that you make them better."<p>

"I think so too." They had found a corner booth and were watching people drift through the Three Broomsticks. Snape saw her take a sip out of her mug. "What do you think of butterbeer?"

She tilted her head slightly and looked at the mug. "I think that it might be an acquired taste. It's very sweet. Like drinking candy. So, is this your regular hangout?"

Snape laughed. "If coming into a place once in five years makes it a hangout, then yes, it is my hangout. I really don't get out much."

"Why not?"

"No one to hang out with. I don't like going out by myself."

"British women must have horrible taste in men if they're not trying to remedy that situation. Seriously."

"That is kind of you to say."

"I'm not being kind. I'm telling the truth." She sipped the butterbeer and tried very hard to like it. "I'm not the type to spend time with a man as a mission of mercy. I like being with you. It's too bad that you don't believe it."

"You are, literally, the first woman I've run across who had such a favorable opinion of me." He stared off at some point in the distance. "Are you sure that you're real?"

"You should know. You carted me up the stairs yesterday. You should remember that, I know that I weigh more than a duck."

"I didn't have time to get my largest scales and check. This is insane. I'm not complaining, but it's tough to believe. You like Monty Python."

"I even have a python named Monty."

"Where do you keep your animals and the rest of your things? You said that you had a home that had been in your family nearby."

"Uh huh." She leaned into Severus and was pleased when he put his arm around her shoulders. "It hadn't been used for three centuries. Late 1600's. I've been cleaning the up. So much stuff in it-I don't think my family ever threw anything away. I've had to add chambers on to it just so I have enough room to walk around. I should have gotten a bulldozer just for the dust." She took a sip of the butterbeer. "As soon as it's presentable, I want you to come over. I think you'd like it, particularly the fine library of banned books."

"Banned for what?"

"Exceptionally dark magic, among other things, some of it quite wicked from the little I've been reading. Wanting to know how to do things we shouldn't do is a family tradition. I got expelled from eleventh grade, that would be like your sixth year, for creating and employing a particularly foul curse against several of my classmates. Be glad you don't have anyone like me in your classes."

"What kind of curse was it?"

"There were a bunch of guys who were always picking on me. They didn't like the way I beat them at duels. They said I looked weird because I had grey hair at 16, and yeah, it did look weird, but that was just how I was. I didn't look good enough, too short, dressed funny-you know how it is, Sev. If people want to find fault with you they can always find something."

"Yes, I know." How well he remembered.

"Anyway, one night a thought came to me how I could get back good at those guys. I went to my uncle, told him what the guys were doing to me and what kind of curse I wanted to put on them. My uncle taught me how to create a curse and off I went with my curse and cursed them."

"It was kind of an unusual curse. We had dorms we lived in at our school. I made the curse so that any time one of them masturbated they would make extremely loud porn movie sorts of moans and groans, 'oh, yeah, baby, right there, oh, god, yes, yes!' and other things in a similar vein, and not realize that they were doing it."

Severus tried to stifle his laughter, thinking that he would loved to have put such a curse on a few Gryffindors who had made his teenage life pure hell. Padfoot. Wormtail. Moony. Prongs. Especially Prongs. He pictured himself casting the curse-that had to have required an interesting incantation. Pictured the effect. Pictured the other members of their house reacting. He dropped his face into his hands and shook with laughter.

"Over the next few nights the curse caused quite a stir in the boy's dorm. They checked wands all over the school and found out that I had done it. They kicked me out and I never did go back. Personally, I think that they should have congratulated me for creating such an advanced piece of magic at such a tender age." She snickered. "It's a good thing I didn't go to school at Hogwarts. Once the two of us put our heads together, they'd have to add a children's wing to Azkaban."

Snape was weak with laughter. "You are evil! Evil! I love it!" He put his arm back around her shoulders. "Deb, do you have plans for tomorrow evening?"

"None yet. Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering if you would want to go on a date with me. A real date. You would have to tell me what to do because I am totally ignorant in that area. I truly don't get out much."

"Easy. Find something you want to do, ditch the Snape coat-don't look at me that way-and let me know what time to be ready and give me some idea of what to dress for. Y'know, casual, slutty, half-way decent, going to a dogfight casual, just give me an idea." She leaned into him. "Sure, I want to go out with you."


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12.

Saturday morning dawned crisp with a hit of chill, and there was an empty spot in the bed to Deborah's right, the spot where Snape had slept. There was a note on the pillow next to hers. She yawned, rolled over and read it.

_Deb, _

_I have to run into town. I'm going to be busy today. I'll stop by for you at 6pm. As far as the clothes thing goes, I think casual, maybe nice casual. A little bit slutty is good, but not too much, haha. Don't pay any attention to me. I'm losing it. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'll try not to screw things up too badly. And I won't wear the so-called Snape coat. I promise._

_Severus_

Deborah went to her closet and started perusing her clothing choices. It wasn't all that difficult; she had brought only a limited selection with her and she liked all she had brought. She selected a sapphire blue silk t-shirt, a silvery scarf, and a pair of cigarette leg jeans. Mostly all done. Except for the shoes, now there was the real decision to be made. On the floor of her closet were at least three hundred pairs of shoes, shrunk down to a compact size. She pulled out a few dozen of her very favorite pairs. This will take a little while, she thought.

* * *

><p>Snape was extremely uncomfortable. He was making one of his rare forays into muggle London, and without the security of his Snape coat, as Deborah had termed it. Oh, did he miss that coat. The heavy cloth, it's somber color, the high neck, the layers of shirt and undershirt beneath it, and the impossible number of buttons made the coat his suit of armor, his protection. Wearing a muggle jacket felt too light. He felt naked and exposed. But at least he wasn't being stared at.<p>

After an embarrassing exchange of owl notes to Lucius, notes which no doubt the suave Malfoy had found humorous, he had received the name of an establishment that could possibly help in his endeavor. Braxton's for Gentlemen. He entered and asked for Adrian Black. A slight dark haired squib came to the desk. Snape steeled himself for what would surely be a time of unpleasantness. "Lucius Malfoy recommended your services. I need some assistance. I have to find suitable clothing to wear on a date tonight."

* * *

><p>Deborah continued to sort through the shoes. Discrete? Outlandish? Whimsical? Cuban heels or stiletto? Platforms? So much lovely footwear. How could she ever make up her mind. Her outfit had been picked out in less that five minutes. Outfits didn't matter much. Any old clothes would do. But <em>shoes<em>….

* * *

><p>"You simply cannot take a lady on a date, particularly a first date, dressed like an undertaker who has come to remove a body." The squib selected one article of clothing after another and presented it to Snape, but the only ones that appealed to the wizard were black and resembled his beloved coat in some way. "The man in black thing worked for Johnny Cash, but you aren't him. So far we have picked out a pair of black boots. Pick something to wear that isn't black."<p>

But nothing looked right. Snape could not imagine himself wearing anything that wasn't either black or at least dark enough navy that it would pass for black. Adrian tried going over his style preferences and about all that he could get out of him was that he liked clothing that was long, or heavy or felt soft.

Adrian sighed. Lucius was going to get a piece of his mind the next time he saw him. "Here is what we're going to do. I am going to go pick out an outfit for you. You are going to close your eyes, put it on, and then come out here and see what it looks like on you. Then maybe you will realize that you can wear something with a little color and it won't make your head explode." He came back in a few moments with his selections and helped Snape, who was both irked and embarrassed by the process, get changed into the clothes without seeing them. Adrian took his elbow and led him out to the mirrors.

Snape stared at the outfit. The faded blue stonewashed jeans fit perfectly, once hemmed they would be fine, so soft that he would wear them even though they weren't his favorite color. But the sweater would take more a little more getting used to. It was a heathery indigo silk and linen crewneck, lightly textured with long sleeves. His ran his hand over the fabric and was surprised at how incredibly thin and soft to touch it felt, as if he wearing pajamas . It didn't look bad at all on him. It wasn't quite perfect to Snape's mind because it wasn't black, but it fit superbly and enveloped him in lush comfort. The squib assured him that it would be no trouble for him to add a discrete pocket to his left sleeve for concealing a wand. He turned a little and checked his reflection from different angles. The sweater looked good all the way around. Then Adrian came up from behind him and said, "Now try this on over it. This is something you're going to fall in love with." And when he saw what Adrian was holding, he was amazed.

* * *

><p>The battle of the shoes was over and the winning pair sat in the middle of Deborah's desk. She began to charm them heavily to feel and perform like her favorite sneakers. So many little straps and buckles. She would have never worn such a thing if she couldn't have put them on magically. How impractical they would be. She wasn't sure she could have even walked in them if it weren't for the sneaker charm. But they were deliciously sexy, a little wicked even. Now, to find a belt to match with them…<p>

* * *

><p>With a half hour to kill while waiting for alterations, he moved into an area of the shop cluttered with a confusing array of bottles and a cacophony of conflicting odors. One by one he checked out the various bottles, and damn, if Deborah wasn't right-ck one smelled exactly like the elixir of homoerotic attraction and he was extremely careful not to spill any of that on himself, just in case. She hadn't said if it worked the same way and he wasn't taking any chances. Some of the colognes smelled passable, some reeked. Some reminded him of the teenage students in his potions classes who appeared to apply their scents with a mop. At last he found one that he really enjoyed. Obsession for Men. Not too sweet. Not fruity. Some of the undertones he detected reminded him of the spices and aromatic woods he worked with when making potions. And as for the name, well, he could appreciate the irony. He did have some personal knowledge of obsession.<p>

* * *

><p>She took a long soak in the tub. There were still five hours until he picked her up and if she hurried she would make the deadline. She pulled a foot out of the water and inspected her toenails. They really should be painted if I'm going to wear those wonderful shoes, she mused. She cast a spell to get her fingernails out to a decent length. She inspected and approved the results. Hmm…French tips or should I go with color?<p>

* * *

><p>It was fortunate that he decided to shower and shave early. There would be ample time for the nicks to disappear if he worked his healing spells properly. If successful, he would not be greeting Deborah looking as if a werewolf had worked his face over then rolled him in bits of toilet paper.<p>

* * *

><p>Parted on the side or parted in the middle. Both ways had their selling points. She tried the side. It looked good. But parted in the middle looked good too. And she still hadn't decided if she would let it dry naturally, per usual, or blow dry her hair straight. Decisions, decisions. She picked up her blow dryer. One decision down, several left to go. There were still the matters of scent and jewelry to decide.<p>

* * *

><p>Snape desperately hoped that Adrian knew what he was talking about. Personally, he couldn't see anything wrong with the perfectly good underwear he had worn into the shop that morning, or why what kind of underwear he wore on a date mattered. When he had said so, Adrian had given him a 'you can't possibly be that naive' look which killed all further objections. So now he was wearing new underwear, different underwear, unfamiliar underwear. At least it was soft, but that still didn't make it feel right. The silky knit undershirt wasn't objectionable, but the slippery silk knit boxers made him feel as if he had forgotten to wear his underwear. It was not a comforting sensation. What was so terrible about good old tighty whities anyway?<p>

* * *

><p>At a quarter until six, Snape knocked on her door and she answered instantly, since she had been waiting directly behind the door. He came in. They each looked the other one over and smiled. Deborah reached out and touched his chest and felt the softness of the sweater and nodded. "This looks great on you." She checked out the coat closely and it was beautiful, a long black trench coat made from very thin buttery leather with a nearly fluid drape. "Now, this is a coat. Severus, this is perfect for you." Snape grinned. He had found something he liked even better than the Snape coat and Deborah liked it as well.<p>

Snape checked out her silver platforms and the many intriguing straps that disappeared under the narrow leg jeans. "Can you really walk in shoes like those?" He felt like an idiot the minute he said it, but it was done and she didn't seem to be offended.

"Stripper heels. Yup. All seven inches of them." Snape was duly impressed. He knew that he must be missing some of the finer points of significance regarding stripper heels, but all the same he felt as if he had probably been handed an incredible gift.

Deborah put her arms around him and leaned against him, sliding her arms under his leather coat. He could feel himself being held so acutely, the thin sweater did nothing to blunt the sensations. She sniffed him. "Mmmm, you smell great!"

He kissed her forehead and discovered that if he brought his cheek down to rub against hers he could peek down the v-cut front of her sapphire silk t-shirt. Discretely, even. He took a deep breath and enjoyed a delicious vanilla-spice oriental scent that surrounded her. A silver chain charm necklace was draped around her neck. It glistened with small glass evil eye beads, tiny faceted stones with myriad protective properties, carved stone fetishes, and minute natural agates that resembled eyes. Tiny bells faintly tinkled when he touched it. It was a perfect witch accessory. He was having a difficult time thinking of Deborah as a wizard when she was dressed as she was.

Deborah reached into her closet and pulled out a long black trench coat, very similar to Snape's. He insisted on helping her put it on and managed to fumble through it without destroying her sleek straight hairstyle. He won a kiss to the cheek for his effort, and she whispered, "It gets easier, Severus, remember, this is me. I'm not grading you." No, she wasn't, and he was grateful for it.

He opened the door for her. "Before we take off, we have to make one small side trip. She handed him a note on familiar stationery, the headmaster's stationery. "We've been called down to the principal's office."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Snape knocked at the headmaster's door and the pair entered. Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore were seated and obviously expecting them. The frankly astonished expressions on their faces bore testimony to the truth that they were not expecting the pair to arrive looking as they did that night.

Severus and Deborah entered the room gliding elegantly, with a nearly feline grace. Minerva was shocked at Snape's appearance, she had never thought of him as being handsome, yet the man who stood before her was darkly attractive, powerful and compelling. The softer drape of the new sweater and jeans revealed a body that was sleek . The midnight black leather that hung in liquid folds around his body revealed his height and strength far beyond what his ordinary dress ever could. The white haired woman was equally powerful; proud and bewitching, with a seductive aura of potent magic, perfectly framed by her own sensual drape of black leather. Those shoes, how could she walk in those shoes? Snape and Deborah exchanged a glance then looked toward her, and McGonagall suddenly recalled that the two of them could communicate telepathically and realized that they had probably heard her thoughts. They made a striking pair.

Albus cleared his throat and was first to speak. "I can see that the two of you have other business to attend to so I won't detain you long." Again, the couple exchanged that long glance, the glance which bespoke that parts of the conversation were only known unto themselves.

"Deborah, Severus. It's apparent to us that the two of you are now a couple. That is none of my business or anyone else's, except in so far as it might possibly cause conjecture and comment among the students and their parents. It simply wouldn't do to have one of you seen coming out of the other's private quarters when the children get here next week. It could create a problem."

The pair looked at each other for a few seconds, and once more McGonagall experienced the disconcerting sensation of observing a conversation which she could not hear. They turned back to Albus and waited silently.

"Minerva and I have put our heads together and have come up with an arrangement which might serve well under the circumstances. The visitor's suite beside yours, Severus, is quite spacious and it has not been used in years. Since Deborah will be assisting you in dealing with Slytherin students, it would be appropriate and more convenient for both of you if she actually resided in the Slytherin area, particularly now that the anti apparition spells are going to be recast. Your private business is your own, but please be discrete. You know how your little serpents love to gossip. The password for the secret passageway between your quarters is 'absinthe,' which shouldn't be too difficult to remember. If either of you would happen to speak it in front of your closet' the connecting hallway will be revealed." Albus smiled at the brief look of discomfiture that flashed across Snape's face. Deborah displayed a slightly feral grin, turned toward Snape, and Albus was delighted-Severus blushed for an instant before recovering his composure.

"If this arrangement is agreeable to both of you, I can have the house elves transfer your belongings to the new quarters tomorrow, Deborah."

_Does it work for you Sev? _Even in his mind he could pick out her laughing tone.

_It's a gift. What about you?_

_Mmm, that secret passage way sounds convenient. Yes, it works for me. _

"It sounds wonderful," Deborah said. "I appreciate that you've been so considerate, Albus." She turned to Minerva. "I realize that you have had concerns about how we might appear to the students-I'm an empath and I can pick up on such thoughts. We are not going to give the students any cause for speculating on our personal lives. We each prefer that some things be kept private. "

"Good! I'll have the house elves clean the guestroom out immediately. It will be ready for you to start arranging tomorrow. Hoople can take you to the storage rooms and you can select whatever furnishings you would like, and Deb, Hoople has asked to be your house elf and if you would like to, you may have him." Albus was beaming, he had seen Snape's scow at the mention of the elf. "Now, before the two of you leave, I have one small request, if you would humor an old man."

Moments later, Severus and Deborah posed standing closely together, her hand on his proffered arm, while Albus took their picture with an archaic looking magical camera. "I'll make copies for both of you," Albus promised.

* * *

><p>Deborah and Severus had disappeared in a swirl of dark leather. Their scents lingered and drifted in the office. Minerva turned to Albus. "I simply do not know what to say about that."<p>

"Slytherins usually do have a certain sense of style. I'm pleased that Severus is finally finding his. Those frock coats he favors are abysmal."

"It's far more than how he is dressed. It's his manner, the way he moves. Did you see how he held himself? Totally different."

"It was bound to happen. Albus poured himself more tea. "Severus has discovered that he is not the ugly duckling. Good for him. Doubly good for her, I'd wager." Minerva raised her eyebrows and did not pursue that line of conversation. Sometimes Albus could get a little too carried away with his matchmaking projects.

* * *

><p>Severus and Deborah were having fish and chips at a London hole in the wall shop. "I realize that it's not terribly imaginative, but this is the kind of food I like and they never serve it at Hogwarts. It's always roast this or boiled that. Never anything greasy or spicy or just plain good. I hope you don't mind."<p>

"Not at all. Especially now that they've managed to find a bottle of catsup for me." She laughed at his disgusted expression. "Stop that or I'll curse you!" She brandished a fry in his direction. She drank some of her beer. "This was an excellent idea."

"We've got almost an hour to kill before the movie starts. Do you want to stay here or look around?"

"Stay here. How often do we get to sit and talk?"

"Never," he said. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I think I'd like to talk about the 'Queen of Blood' that you keep thinking about but don't want to ask me about."

Damn, he thought, you can't keep anything from an empath.

_I heard that. No you can't. Sev, if you want to know something about me, ask. The worst I can do is say that it's something I don't want to get into at the moment. Anyway, the 'Queen of Blood' is a disgusting name that was given to me by some American magical papers, rags on the order of the Daily Prophet. It must have helped sell papers because they latched onto that with a vengeance. I was married at one time, and my husband rose to be the commander of the vampire main force, and yes, he was a vampire. He was killed in battle. I was his second in command so upon his death I assumed command of the forces. Because they were under martial law due to the war for a brief time I was technically the head of the vampire nation; it took about a week until I could hand leadership over to a vampire. It was all wonderfully sensational and intriguing to bored folks who had no concept of losing someone you love in war or of having to fight on and not be able to mourn your husband. But yeah, that is what the 'Queen of Blood' bullshit is about. Because my husband was a vampire and because I led the forces for a few days after his death. _

_My husband's name was Ian Grey, he was Reuben's brother. Reuben calls me 'sis' and 'little sister' because he called me that when I was his sister-in-law, maybe I am still his sister-in-law. I'm guessing that you found some reference to me in the library. Honestly, I don't mind answering your questions. It happened several years ago, and that part of my life is over. I have no desire to live in the past and I'm not afraid to look at the past. It's just…the past. Reuben is one of my very few connections to that time in my life because he's part of the family._

_Deb, I'm sorry. I had no idea it was anything like that or I wouldn't have even looked it up to be thinking of it. I assumed it was just a nickname because of your being in combat and maybe because you can fight so well. Witches get that sort of thing here and yet they're some of the best fighters. I didn't want to ruin your evening like this._

_Sev, stop it, you haven't ruined my evening. The past is the past. I don't live there. I'm having a wonderful time. I'm with you and that is exactly where I want to be. Ask what you want to know._

_Did you become a wizard by fighting in the war? I've wondered because Albus said there was more than one way to get the title._

_Originally that was how I got it. I eventually finished all of the courses to get it the normal way. Funny thing about me-I never was a witch because I got kicked out of school before I qualified and then I ended up going straight into battle. So I went directly into being a wizard. _

_We had the wizarding troubles here when I was finishing Hogwarts. I screwed up. I was so hungry for power and to make a name for myself and there was Voldemort and it seemed to me like it was the first time in my life that anyone ever appreciated me or wanted me as part of their crowd. It was totally stupid, of course, but I was eighteen. Nobody had ever thought that I was good for anything and then someone wanted me. I should have known better but I didn't. I can't even imagine why I didn't see through him then._

_Eighteen is a whole different world than when you hit your thirties. It's easy to say that I should have known better, but it's not a fair assessment. You did what you did based on your experiences at that point in your life. And they hadn't been good experiences either. Tom Riddle was a very persuasive bastard. He knew exactly what to say to make you think that he was serving your purposes when he was really serving his own. Any eighteen year coming from where you did would have been no match for him. I had my entire family backing me when I dealt with him._

_You met Voldemort._

_Yeah, I met the son of a bitch several times. I was eighteen or nineteen. He came to America in the late seventies to try to get us to jump in with him on his pureblood bandwagon. The American wizards thought he was nuts. He was a halfblood trying to convince purebloods that there was something wrong with mixed blood. It made no sense and we told him so. Oh, and he had his big plans to try to get American witches and wizards to breed purebloods for Britain. The females amongst us anyway. And he wanted me and several others to bear his pureblooded children, which wouldn't be pureblooded children anyway if they were his, and he was preaching all of this nonsense to a country where the magical community didn't care about whether their wizards were purebloods, halfbloods, or cropouts, which is what we call muggleborns. The idiot stood in my father's house and more or less told my father that he wanted me for breeding stock. When my father sent him on, he sneaked back and tried to talk me into running away with him. He was totally insane and totally convinced that no woman could resist him, but each and every American one told him to get lost. Personally, I told him to stick it where the sun doesn't shine, yeah, those were my exact words to your so-called 'Dark Lord.' He also found out that I know how to send someone off with a good old American 'fuck you' and a pretty neat burning curse for good measure. Don't look at me that way. He might be the Dark Lord around these parts but where I come from he is 'that asshole from across the pond, Tom Riddle.' And you know that I know a little about fighting. __He met similar welcomes everywhere he went and essentially got run out of town. He skedaddled so fast that we didn't have time for the tar or feathers, pity._

_Do you think that he can find a way to come back? It seems so impossible, but it feels like it's happening already._

_Sure he can and sure he will. There are ways to do it, I can think of several, no decent person would do what he's going to do but then again, Tom isn't anything like a decent person and never has been. You know that as well as I do. He's a sadistic bastard, and sociopath, or as my father succinctly put it, a sick fuck. I wish it weren't so, but we haven't seen the back of him yet. Sev, you be careful when it starts to go down. I love my cousin Albus, but he is a tougher man than most people realize. His main concern is not going to be for the welfare of Severus Snape, or for Deborah Jenkins for that matter. And remember, when it goes down, I've got your back. You haven't seen me in a real fight, but I'm not shabby. Not by a long shot._

The pair was quiet for a while after that thought, and continued picking at their food, their hunger satisfied. Severus took a long look at the dining area.

"Do you think that people think it's strange that we are sitting here eating and we don't appear to be talking to each other?"

"Not at all." she replied. "They probably assume that we're married." _I think that it's strange that you keep thinking about how weird your new underwear feels. You should have worn the old ones. There is nothing wrong with tighty whities._

* * *

><p>They left the theater. Deborah thought that <em>Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves<em> had been an unusual choice-a good movie but not a date movie. Most guys picked stupid chick flicks for date movies, a type of entertainment she didn't care much for. She enjoyed the film, not that it mattered. She would have been perfectly fine with watching two hours worth of insurance commercials. She had savored the experience of leaning against him, watching his face by the flickering pale light from the screen. His mind hadn't exactly been on the movie either. Nor could she claim all of the credit for that. She snickered. I have to see those underwear. I want to see what keeps a wizard like him so edgy all evening.

They strolled from the theater arm in arm. Street sounds gradually gave way to more pleasing natural sounds as they entered a deserted park. The moon was bright, nearly full. Severus said, "It's time to begin our little series of apparitions."

"Or, we could just fly," she said.

"Neither of us brought a broom, which is frankly much safer in your case."

"I didn't say ride a broom. I said fly. The way I do, not your way."

"How exactly do you fly with no broom?"

"I'll show you how." She buttoned his coat and tied the belt. He thought it was funny and tender the way she did such little things, always concerned for his comfort. "My way of flying is a little cold," she explained, "I don't want to freeze you. Take my arm."

Deborah offered him her left arm, which he took. She whispered something that he didn't quite hear, raised her right hand a small distance over the top of her head and pointed skyward with her index finger. They slowly levitated off the park lawn. She straightened her arm a little more and they began to ascend more swiftly. After they cleared the maze of telephone and electrical wires, she straightened her arm to nearly the fullest extent possible and stretched her hand out flat before her, palm down.

He found himself clinging tightly to her arm, flying over the countryside at an incredible rate of speed, far more swiftly than he had ever traveled by broom. The wind was cold on his face, but it was a thrilling ride. He found himself grinning with delight and he caught a glimpse of a rapt expression on Deborah's face when he was able to tear his eyes away from the scenery flashing below. They were moving so swiftly that he could feel the air's lift on the front of his body, lift that he could manipulate by changing his position slightly. This was true flight, not riding an object, it felt free. He was a little disappointed when they arrived at a Hogwarts courtyard so quickly. Deborah's kind of flying was far more wonderful than using a broom.

Severus walked her back to her room, a little nervous now. He wasn't sure where the evening was going and suddenly he felt that he needed to somehow escape-too much was happening too fast. He walked her to her door and kissed her after she entered. She thanked him for the wonderful evening, he thanked her for going with him. He silently thanked all that is good and holy that he hadn't made an ass of himself on their first date. He turned to leave when a hand caught him by the back of his coat. "And just where do you think you're going? I've watched you fidget and have been hearing you think about those new underwear of yours all evening. It's about time that I find out what sort of pernicious garment could be so upsetting." She pulled him none too gently back into the room.

* * *

><p><em>No, you're not running away this time. Sev, I know that you're not ready for some things and that is fine. But there is plenty that that you are ready for and you can enjoy; we are going to have a wonderful night tonight. Trust me. I care about you. You are safe and you are loved here. <em>

She motioned for his coat. After a moment of hesitation, he allowed her to help him remove it. She hung it carefully on a coat rack next to her door then placed her own beside it. She turned back to see Severus intently inspecting some crochet pattern books on her shelves, as if she might possibly believe that he was interested in crochet patterns. She walked up behind him and hugged him to her.

He startled a little. He felt that he was sliding into unfamiliar territory, which was an extremely accurate assessment. Her hands stroked him from his shoulders down to his thighs-he tensed but didn't try to move away. She stepped in front of him and angled her face upward for a kiss and he responded-here was something with the safety of being well known. They spent long minutes in a tender embrace. Then she took his hand and led him to her bed. He started to speak and she silenced him with a tiny frown. She sat him on what had come to be "his" side of the bed.

Deborah moved to the other side of the room, and he stole a glance over his shoulder. She had pulled off the fabulous shoes and was standing in front of her closet with her back to him. She peeled away the thin silk top and tossed it into a hamper. She tossed in a lacy bra, then jeans, then slid out of her black hipsters. She pulled off her knee high hose. She turned quickly enough to catch him watching, before he could turn away. She allowed herself a knowing smirk.

With a flip of her hand she extinguished all of the candles in the room except for one small one that flickered on her nightstand. Now she turned her attentions to Snape. She stood in front of him, inviting him to look. He chose to stare at the floor. She caught him by the chin with her hand and gently lifted his face and kissed him slowly. Again he responded to the familiar. She broke the kiss and stepped back.

He sat there, not knowing what to do. She knelt and removed his boots, then his socks, which she placed inside of the boots. She stood. She stroked his face and kissed him again. This time his response was a little hesitant-he was clearly uncomfortable. She knelt again and unbuckled his belt and he stared away, somewhere into the distance. She unsnapped the jeans and unzipped them. "Lift up a little," she whispered. He did and she pulled the jeans down and off of his body. She folded them and placed them on a nearby bench.

He looks so miserable and uncomfortable, she thought to herself, carefully shielding the thought so that he wouldn't hear it. She sat beside him, leaning into him. She put her arm around him, running it up under the sweater. She put her head on his chest and after a few seconds he nuzzled her face with his. She gave him a few moments to become a little more composed. She stood and pulled his sweater and undershirt over his head, pleased to discover that he raised his arms obediently to assist her. Taking his hand, she pulled him to standing, then kissed him again. She turned down the bed and she could feel his relief at crawling in and being covered. She shielded her thoughts again. Hiding under textiles as always. It isn't going to work this time, Severus. She noticed him keeping his left arm close to his body, even now he can't forget that damned mark, she thought.

She knelt beside the bed and began kissing him ardently. He responded, finally more comfortable, protected by layers of warm bedding. She slid her hand into the small of his back and pressed upward. Without thinking he raised his hips and that was his downfall-with a practiced hand she thrust her other hand under the sheets and quickly slipped his boxers down and off of his body. She smiled knowingly and displayed her prize for a moment before she placed it on top of the stack she had been building. Severus had a slightly wounded, slightly, 'oh, no' look on his face. She experienced a brief instant of evil glee then admonished herself for enjoying his distress. She walked to the other side of the bed, blew out the remaining candle, and climbed in beside him.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14.

Deborah rolled onto her side, facing him. She lay her arm across his chest and hugged him. He lay still, paralyzed by his anxiety. She rested her head on his chest. His heart was pounding rapidly and he was shivering. _He's truly terrified. _She kept that thought hidden, he was miserable enough without knowing how much she was picking up on his fear and embarrassment. This is what happens when a pack of sadistic little bastards torments someone far beyond his capacity to endure, she thought.

Her hand moved gently over his arm, his shoulder, his chest. She traced his collarbones. Reaching, she stroked his cheek and as she had suspected, it was damp. She rose up on her elbow and kissed his cheeks, his eyes, his throat. He gradually began to respond, hesitantly at first. He wouldn't open his eyes and look at her, couldn't force himself to speak. She whispered to him, small encouragements. Her hand lazily floated over his stomach, his hip, up his side. She spoke softly again, telling him how much he meant to her, how amazing it felt to be with him.

He was acutely aware of her touch on his body, aware of even the slightest shift of the sheets against his bare skin. When she ran her fingers through his hair, it was familiar and reassuring. She stroked his cheeks with the backs of her nails, the odd sensation was somehow exciting. She held him as if he were something beautiful and precious. It nearly brought tears to his eyes again.

He tentatively began to explore her body. She continued to stroke him, guiding his hands. He was shocked to find how sensitive he had become and how quickly his body responded. He closed his eyes and sighed.

He rolled onto his side toward her. He was less self conscious now, becoming languid, his mind lazy and his body at ease. Nothing had been forbidden to him. He felt warm and completely accepted. She stroked the length of his side and caressed his thighs and buttocks. He loved the soothing feel of her touch. "Is this headed where I think it is?" he whispered hoarsely.

"It's headed wherever we feel like taking it." She pressed her lips against his, a little less tenderly than before and fondled him. He heard his own breathing change to ragged gasps; he could hear his heartbeat in his own ears. He felt aroused to the point of aching.

His instincts overtook his fears.

He felt himself become wrapped in her arms and legs and enveloped in her heat, and somehow at that moment the years of abuse and obsession no longer mattered. He had become that he was created to be; a powerful wizard, unafraid to love and to be loved.

* * *

><p>He lay on his back surrounded by rumpled bedding. His body was exhausted but his mind was drifting like smoke, sifting through the tangle of feelings and sensations he had experienced, trying to make some sense of what had occurred. The white haired wizard returned from the bathroom and straightened the covers, pulling them up to keep him warm; there was a chill in the air and his skin was damp from exertion. She slipped in next to him and brushed the dark strands of hair from his face.<p>

He was shivering and he wondered if it was truly from the cold. Deborah moved up against him to comfort him with her body. She lay her arm across his chest and he took her hand and held it tightly next to his skin. It was so terribly difficult to talk and yet he had to. "I never thought this would happen," he said in almost a whisper. "I thought that there was something horribly wrong with me."

"There there wasn't anything wrong with you at all. People lied to you and abused you and made you afraid."

"Did you know about all of it?"

"Probably most of it. I can block out your thoughts if they aren't extremely strong, but the ones you had about the way the marauders tortured you were like screams. I've blocked you from reading me some of tonight."

"Why?"

"I knew that it was painful for you to deal with being naked and vulnerable. I didn't want for you to have an even tougher time and be embarrassed about my knowing how difficult this all was for you. Snivelus Greasy. What a crock. There isn't anything snively or cowardly about you. As for the greasy," she sighed and stroked his dark damp locks, "what can I say? My hair is the same way, damnit. I fight that battle every day. I never did grow out of it."

* * *

><p>"What? You're still here?" Deborah yawned and stretched. Snape was lying on his back beside her, staring at the ceiling. He rolled over and took her in his arms and kissed her. She smoothed his tangled hair back and smiled. "So, how do you feel this fine morning?"<p>

"Tired. Slightly sore." She snickered at that one and he chuckled along with her. "I was greeted by a revolting sight this morning. When I opened my eyes, your little friend Hoople was sitting at the foot of the bed, staring at me. After an amazing night of making love, there's nothing I'd rather wake up to in the morning than the sight of your bug-eyed minion."

"I see that I'm going to have to give Hoople another talk on human expectations of privacy. Either that or you're going to spend a lot of time being sick." She ran her arm in a sweeping movement across his back and pulled him closer. He made a sound that was nearly like a purr. They enjoyed the closeness. He feels different, she thought. Like he's at peace.

"I believe that I could lie here all day. Except for one small detail. We have to get you moved down to the dungeon by tomorrow evening at the latest. I hope that those elves have cleaned that place out. I have never even looked in there but it was probably coated in two feet of dust."

"In that case I better get up and get going. Do you think that the two of us can fit in my shower at one time?"

As it turned out, they could.

* * *

><p>Snape's old gym suit had somehow ended up in her closet and Deborah had some equally ratty cut off jeans and a t-shirt, which seemed to be the clothes best suited to getting her new quarters in order. They had a quick breakfast then moved on to the Slytherin dungeon to have a look at the guest quarters.<p>

It was far better than they had hoped for. Obviously someone had wanted to impress the guests because the suite was huge. There was a good sized sitting/living area with an adjoining small office, a large bedroom with a walk-in closet and best of all, the bathroom.

"I can't believe that this has been here all this time and I never knew about it. It's like a cathedral!" He was right, it was amazing. The bathroom was huge, with a raised pool instead of a tub at the far end. A separate shower stood off to one side. There were three doors, which they checked out immediately. One went to a toilet and the other two were closets for linens and towels. The ceiling was at least fifteen meters high. "I could live in this place, there is literally room to live in here." He walked up the green marble steps to the pool. One side was fashioned as an underwater bench. "Nice and deep in here, and almost large enough to swim in."

The elves had done an admirable job of readying the place. The marble facings of the walls and the green flagstone floors gleamed. "Sev, I think we're going to have to put this pool to use tonight," she said. He walked behind her and put his arms around her and rested his cheek on top of her head. Ah, it felt so good to be able to do that and not wonder if he was going to be rejected.

_It's pretty weird to have a bathroom that's as large as the rest of your quarters, but a good weird. I'll share with you._

_I would like that. _He held on for another moment. "OK, let's go to storage and you can pick out your furniture."

* * *

><p>Deborah brought the bed from her old rooms with her and swapped a storage bed in as a replacement. She found a dark brown leather sectional set, which she arranged around the fireplace. She ditched the heavy green curtains and hung cream crochet lace ones instead. More light entered from the high dungeon windows, an effect she liked. She had a few changes in mind, changes that were going to take some planning and precise magic. But within a couple of hours her new quarters were comfortable. Severus had crashed on the sofa early in the endeavor, bored with furniture arranging. Poor thing, she thought. Something must have worn him out last night. She found an afghan and covered him.<p>

Near noontime, Minerva McGonagall visited with a flower arrangement as a housewarming gift. Deborah thanked her and set them on a table, then cautioned her to be quiet then led her around the sofa. Severus was sprawled half on the sofa and half onto the floor snoring softly. Minerva covered her face with her hands and choked. They fled into the Slytherin common room and closed the door. "This is the help I get on moving day." They both broke out laughing.

* * *

><p>"Our last night before the heathens arrive."<p>

They lounged in the pool, drinking beer. "Oh, if your students could see you now."

"No, thank you. They create enough 'Professor Snape' artwork as it is without any additional inspiration."

"We won't be hanging out on the astronomy tower deck for a while. I'm going to miss that place."

"I will as well."

"I'm going to brush off my magical architectural skills and do some modifications to the sitting room…why are you looking at me that way?"

"Deb, is there anything you haven't managed to get involved with at one time or another? Aside from learning to stay on a broom?"

"Please. I was in wizarding college for seven years. I was already a wizard, so all I needed to do was to take a huge number of credit courses-my thesis was waived and I only had to do a handful of requireds. So I spent six and a half years taking every sort of thing that appealed to me. It was like a big party.

"You didn't have to major in anything? You just played around?"

"I majored in wands, which was already my hobby so it was playing for me. Minored in magical healing, much of which I knew from the war. So yeah, it was a party for me. I needed something to keep me occupied and not sitting around day and night thinking about losing Ian. I'm a lot better now and I've moved on with my life. But I still think about him sometimes. There is no way you can ever forget someone you loved who died protecting you."

Snape didn't know what to say to that. He just put his arms around her and sat with her. She slid her arm around him. "Life goes on, Sev. We don't do honor to our dead by not living our lives."


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The difference a single day makes, Snape mused.

He strolled from his quarters to hers through the connecting passage. Deborah was sitting on her sofa reading. He looked over her shoulder. _Principles of Magical Architecture: Chapter 9, Magically Suspended Subfloors and Associated Structural Elements._ He made a disgusted face and walked around and sat beside her. When she nodded and kept reading, he leaned on her.

"Is something on your mind?"

He bit the inside of his lip and thought, trying to frame what it was he wanted to say. It wasn't coming very easily. He hated not being able to pick the right words.

"Do you want to know what comes next?" Sometimes you just have to have out with it and not try to worry too much about how you put it, she thought.

"Yes."

"I have no idea." She had to smile at the frank surprise on his face. "Come on, lie down." He lowered himself to the couch and used her lap for a pillow.

"Are you about to tell me something so terrible that I have to be lying down to hear it. Should I close my eyes too?"

"Your choice. Good grief, Severus, I'm not preparing you for a shock. I just like to play with your hair." She smoothed it with her fingers. He grinned, he liked when she did that.

"OK, baby, now for the awful truth. Picture your life as a book. It has a beginning. It has an end. There are different chapters in your life. Now, when you leave the chapter that ends with 'and they had sex' it is not followed by a chapter that begins 'and everything was easy and perfect thereafter.' Because the next chapter starts with 'and now they had to figure out if they wanted to have some sort of relationship, and if so what kind is would be, and this was when they discovered all of the annoying things the other one does.' It's the toughest chapter in the book."

"Now, we could go ask Sybill Trelawney what is in store for us, but I wouldn't recommend it. Based on what I've seen of her she would be hard pressed to predict increased loo usage after a keg party."

Severus didn't have a high opinion of prophecy. (quite possibly because he had not a single shred of aptitude for it) His smirk said as much.

"The thing of this is, we're going to have to figure it out for ourselves. I don't have to be a psychic to know that it's not going to be easy. We're both set in our ways. We each have our own little miserable ways when we get pissed off. We both like to grab power and make decisions and not have to cooperate. It will be interesting. Especially when the war starts back up."

His expression darkened.

"And we don't have to deal with the war or much else of anything right now. I think that we ought to give ourselves at least a few days of getting used to each other. We're practically living together and we have to keep it under wraps. That is going to be tough in a hive of busybodies like this one. There are so many times we're walking down the hall and I want to put my hand in yours or even put my arm around your waist."

He nodded. Now, on to the question that had been plaguing him ever since last night. "Deb, am I any good in bed? Please tell me, don't just try to make me feel good about myself."

"No. You are not very good at all. And neither am I. We're amateurs."

A wounded expression passed over his face. "What, you thought that on your very first night you were going to be an expert?" Now, a look of shock. "Yes, I knew. I knew even before last night. I've known since the first night I went down to your potions lab and saw you trying to crack the stink oak nut."

"How?"

"Stink oak nuts are only difficult to open for virgins. Practicing when you're alone doesn't count. Don't give me that look. Severus, if you don't believe me, go down and try to open one now. It will practically split itself apart for you now."

_Later that week Snape sat in his potions lab, his desk littered by a dozen cracked stink oak nuts. He pulled a whole nut out of a bag and tapped it delicately with his finger. It broke completely open. "Son of a bitch!" He muttered under his breath and tried blowing on the next one. It broke completely open. "Son of a bitch!"_

* * *

><p>Ah, the joys of waking up after having slept well. He thought back to the reason he had slept so soundly and allowed himself a small smile. He was going to have to remember not to smile in front of the little annoyances. They would interpret it as a sign of weakness. He worked to cultivate his reputation and wasn't about to lose it now.<p>

He showered and dressed efficiently. As he put on his favorite coat, he felt a brief and unexpected pang of regret. It wasn't quite so comforting anymore. For an instant he felt imprisoned, cut off from everything else. He banished the illogical thought from his head. This is only a coat. My favorite coat. Now I get to wear it and she can't say anything about it because it's for teaching.

He heard footsteps coming from Absinthe Alley, as they had started calling the corridor between their quarters. Let's see what Deb is going to wear for robes. Probably something whimsical. He turned and his eyes widened.

She wore a dark grey military cut tunic. Silver and red braid barely touched the edges of the neckline and sleeves. Several wide silver stripes decorated the bottom of the sleeves. Her pants were black, some sort of thin wool and they were tucked into knee high black boots, military boots, he guessed. A dagger hilt stuck conspicuously out of the top of the right hand boot. Her shirt was black with a band collar. She caught the look on Snape's face. "It's my uniform. My university robes-they're scarlet and gold. Gryffindor colors. As much as I like the scarlet and gold, I figure that this would be more appropriate since I'm going to be living in Slytherin House."

"This is what you wore in the wars?"

"Some of it. I left the cape, hood, and most of the weapons off. But the tradition is that you can never wear it publicly without the dagger."

He took it all in. "It doesn't look like you."

She gave a small lopsided smile. "It isn't me. That Snape coat of yours isn't you either. These outfits are our costumes." She stepped next to him, put her arm around his waist, and took a good look at their reflection in his dresser mirror. "We look like a couple of real jackasses. Time to strut and fret our hour upon the stage." She squeezed his hand once and they left for breakfast.

* * *

><p>"And here they come. Writhing hoards of wizarding larvae for us to attempt to educate."<p>

"Snape! Be nice!" She elbowed him in the ribs.

"Never," he smirked. "And if that leaves a bruise I'm going to expect you to make it better tonight. And while I'm thinking of it, I did soundproofing spells for your quarters while you lay abed this morning."

"Seeing as that was a rather self-serving act, I don't believe I need to thank you. After all, you're the one who makes most of the noise."

"You're a mean woman. I don't know if I want to like you any more. Ssshhh, here they come."

A wall of first year students rolled through the hall, knocking into each other, yelling, arguing. Deborah gave them a cool glance. Snape openly scowled.

_Stop it Sev, you're scaring them._

_Good. That way they might be afraid to try to kill us._

* * *

><p>The sorting ceremony began.<p>

_I don't want that one. He looks like a bed pisser._

_What exactly does a bed pisser look like?_

_Like that. Ha! Hufflepuff. A bed pisser will feel right at home there._

_Severus, I swear. How would you like someone to talk about you like that?_

_They wouldn't talk about me that way. I don't piss the bed. __This next one. She looks like a little snot. Probably a Gryffindor. Ravenclaw. Didn't see that one coming. She might have a brain after all._

_Severus Snape. I hope that no one else around here can hear what you're thinking. _

_This kid coming up with the blonde hair. That has to be a Slytherin. He's the son of one of my friends….yes, Slytherin!_

_Which friend?_

_Lucius. We went to school here together, he was a few classes ahead of me. He's given us an open invitation for dinner. _

_Do you want to go?_

_Sure. Now that school is in session, we can have dinner without his rude little brat interrupting every conversation. You might like Lucius. He is interested in everything under the sun, just as you are. He is very interested in genealogy and architecture and history. He's a snob, of course, but I figure that you can handle that._

_Yeah, I'd love to go._

_Let me give you a little background information about going to Malfoy Manor. Lucius and Cissy, that's his wife, will put on a show fit for the queen. Cissy will be doing it because she loves a spectacle, but Lucius loves to act superior and that is one of the ways he does it. Dress like you're going to a formal ball at the palace, that is how they're going to be dressed._

_Oh, sugar, no worries. I love to play with snobs. It's a game I'm quite good at. Whenever you're ready._

_Let me get in touch with him. Does this weekend good for you?_

_Yes. Let me know, I might have to run South. I've stored most of my good clothes down there._

_How's that coming along?_

_Slowly. I've talked with Albus and in a couple of weeks I'm going to take a week off and go down there with a dozen or so house elves and see if I can get it wrapped up. I want us to have a place we can go and relax on our weekends off. Someplace private._

_That would be good. I already miss having the run of the place and not having to be so discrete. _

_I'll meet you in the pool at nine. I'll be indiscrete with you, all night long if you want to, or until you can't manage. Hey, why did you kick me? I expect you to fix that if it leaves a bruise._

_It's a deal. _

* * *

><p>There was an insistant knock at the door. They woke and looked-it was Snape's room, so Deborah hid in his bathroom. He threw on a bathrobe and went to the door. Little Draco Malfoy was standing there.<p>

"Professor Snape, Vincent peed in his bed."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Deborah started assisting in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes. " I get a really bad feeling about the guy teaching it. Severus, what the is up with him? Do you know?"

"Quirrell? I don't trust him. He's hiding something."

"I'm glad it isn't just me. He's too familiar, as if he thinks he knows me."

"Do you want me to say something to him?"

"Heavens no, Sev. If he annoys me too badly, I'll pound him to a bloody pulp." Snape looked up from his book at her. She probably could, he thought. Easily.

She got up and walked behind him and started massaging his neck and shoulders. He leaned forward to allow her better access. "Woman, I will never finish this book if you keep distracting me. Ah, yes, right there…." She started to massage his scalp and scratch his head. He leaned back to allow her better access.

"So, what are you reading this fine evening?" She started working on his upper back. He leaned forward to allow her better access.

"Mmmmm. That feels so good. I'm reading one of the books you brought from your library. It's a little difficult to get through because the language has changed so much in five hundred years. But there are some decent sounding potion recipes and spells in there; most of them are ones I've never heard of."

"Are you finding anything useful?" She started working on his upper arms. He leaned his head back against her and closed his eyes.

"Yes, I am. A great deal of it is medicinal, but there are a couple of conjuring spells there I'd like to try and something that claims to be an invisibility potion."

"I know that one. It works. It's easier to use the invisibility incantation, though. You can reverse it anytime you want to. The invisibility potion has a unpredictable duration. I don't trust it." She was massaging his lower back. Snape crossed his arms and put his head down on his desk.

"Really? You know an invisibility incantation that works well?"

"Yes." She muttered something under her breath. Invisible arms pulled him up and wrapped themselves around his chest while a kiss appeared on his temple from thin air. He heard soft muttering and he could see Deborah's arms holding him again.

"Is that spell in here? That is one I need to learn."

"That is a fairly recent one, it's only been around for a couple of hundred years or so." She yawned. "I'll show you that one in the morning. I'm going to bed."

"Good idea. I wonder how long it will take for one of the little heathens to wake us up about a pissy bed?"

"They won't tonight. I put Hoople in charge of the bedwetters. He's going to wake them up every couple of hours to go to the bathroom and if any of them pee their beds he's going to talk them through changing the sheets."

"I applaud you. You've found something useful for the ugly little thing to do."

* * *

><p>Deborah had made a quick run to the house to pick up some clothes. She was out having her hair done, and Severus was dressing for Malfoy manor. He pulled one of his dress robes out, and checked it over. Perfect, nothing for the house elves to clean or fix here. It was a beautiful black wool with a fluid drape. One of the advantages to being single and having a job that paid very well was that he could indulge in the things that mattered to him, like nice dress robes.<p>

He had just gotten dressed when he heard a tap at the door from the other end of Absinthe Alley. "Come in," he said. "I'm decent, as if that matters."

The sight of her took his breath. She was wearing a long gold gown cut to the style of 1930's Hollywood. Her white hair was parted to the side and deeply waved in a perfect imitation of a long ago starlet's; it could almost pass as platinum blonde. She had forgone her beloved stripper heels for gold high heeled sandals. A strand of diamonds at her neck and a white fur stole completed the outfit. She looked as if she could have walked directly out of a golden era film.

"Brilliant!" he whispered.

"Good enough for the Malfoys?"

"They're not going to know what hit them." He stared at her short cap sleeves. "You're not taking your wand?"

"Says who?" She tapped her left forearm. "Reveal." A thin covering of elastic material stretched from her wrist to nearly her elbow. Thin channels were stitched into the device and Snape could see at least four wands in place. "Obscure." It was invisible again. "Here, let me show you another thing this works for. Give me your arm." She took his left arm, unbuttoned the sleeve, and pushed his coat and shirt up, revealing the ugly raised ciatrix from the dark mark. Snape frowned. He did not like to look at it himself, let alone have Deborah see it. She ran her fingers over it, stroking lightly. "Obscure." All signs of the mark were obliterated.

"Did you just…"

"I can't remove a magical brand until the maker is dead. Riddle is not dead, he's alive in some form somewhere. But I can make it not visible, just as the sleeve I have my wands in is invisible. Here, feel it." She took his other hand and ran it over where the mark was. All he could detect was smooth skin, none of the thick scar tissue was apparent. "Best I can do for now, Severus. Once the bastard is dead it will give me great pleasure to take that damned thing off for you." She rebuttoned his shirt sleeve and replaced his coat sleeve. She gave him a hug and drew a deep breath. "Obsession. I love the way you smell."

He pulled her tightly to him. He almost didn't want to go out for the evening.

* * *

><p>They apparated on the walkway leading to Malfoy manor. Lucius was waiting for them and Snape was pleased to watch his friend's jaw drop for a moment when he saw Deborah. I'll bet that he wasn't expecting anyone like her, he thought smugly. She was in a league far beyond all of the witches Lucius had tried to set him up with over the years.<p>

"This is such a beautiful estate," Deborah said, taking in the manor. "Elizabethan to be sure, but the Italianate influence is definitely there. Renaissance written all over it. Late 1500's?"

"Yes, and you do know your architecture! Please, come in and meet my wife!" Lucius offered Deborah his arm, which she accepted graciously. Snape smirked. Oh, she was slick. In fifteen seconds she had his snobby friend fawning over her like one of her house elves.

Narcissa was a little more reserved, but before long she and Deborah were chatting like old friends. The dinner went superbly and the women started discussing fashion. The men left them for a moment so that Lucius could have a cigar. "Where did you find her?" Lucius asked. "That is one extraordinary woman."

Severus smiled smugly. "Actually, she found me. She came from America to visit her cousin, Albus Dumbledore. Then she started coming down to my lab for one reason or another at night. One day she decided that she was going to show me how to make a wand, that is her hobby and she does an excellent job of it. One thing led to another and now we spend a great deal of time together." You envious asshole, Snape thought. This is wonderful revenge for all of your jokes about how I can't find a date.

"If she's representative of American witches, I may have to pull Draco out of Hogwarts and send him overseas."

"She isn't a witch."

"You're dating a muggle? Are you out of your mind?"

"She is a wizard." Snape savored the look of shock that brought. "In America, wizard is a title, not a gender."

Lucius thought for a moment. "Whatever you want to call her, that is one splendid woman. I can see where the two of you would make a good couple."

"That is surprising. I wouldn't think that you would consider that a halfblood would be worthy of such a pureblooded prize."

Lucius shook his head. "You have a most regrettable tendency to sell yourself short, my friend." That gave Snape a small start. "My thought on it is that the two of you are evenly matched." Lucius thought for a moment. "So, she's a pureblood?"

"For over a thousand years worth of ancestors." Lucius gave him a questioning glance. "There is a little fairy blood in the mix. Her family is hugely into genealogy. Most of the witches and wizards in America are, apparently. Deb says that here we can look around and our see our heritage in the places and buildings every day. They can't in America. Their heritage, as she puts it, is a bunch of idiot non-magicals killing each other off in Salem and calling it a witch hunt. So they have made their bloodlines their tie to the past."

"So, how well do you know her?"

"For a couple of months…."

"That isn't what I mean."

* * *

><p>"Where did you find that gown?" she asked, staring at the glittery garment appreciatively. "It's quite unusual. Beautiful as well."<p>

"I had it designed and sewn for me by a Chinese woman who owns a small custom shop in Huston, Texas. I have always been intrigued by the golden age of Hollywood movies and the gowns; they are so elegant compared to most of what you see today. I showed the Chinese lady a shoebox full of photographs and magazine clippings I had saved. We went through and she sketched out this design based on the features I liked best. I picked out this material because I just plain liked it." Deborah took a sip of her brandy. "I've spent far more on my other gowns but I don't like any of them as well as the clothes that Chinese lady makes for me. She is working on a couple for me now, a midnight blue silk that will be floor length and a flapper era styled short gown."

"They sound beautiful. So, if you don't mind me asking, how did you meet Severus?"

"I don't mind at all. Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster at Hogwarts, is a distant cousin of mine. He and my father knew each other when my father was in London during the war. One day, out of the blue, he invited me to visit and stay for as long as I wanted. I came, Severus was the one who picked me up at the train platform, and after a while we found that we get along well. Later on, Albus approached me to help out on staff and I really was getting bored being the visiting cousin without much to do, so I agreed. It's been quite different than what I was used to back home."

"How is that?"

"Our wizarding community has adopted quite a few nil innovations-nil is what we call non-magicals, or what you would call muggles. We wear the same things, eat most of the same foods, nobody goes anywhere on a broom, and we use computers. Nobody writes with a quill. Many of us own businesses that employ muggles. Myself, I'm invested in the stock market and I inherited several businesses, mostly jewelry stores. I have real estate holdings that are rented out too. I used to spend quite a bit of time overseeing things, but now I've hired managers so that I don't have to concern myself with the day to day business. It works out well for me because I don't have to work for a living so I can do whatever I want to do, even if it's teaching at Hogwarts."

Narcissa looked down at Deborah's gold sandals. "I would break my neck if I wore something like that."

Deborah laughed. "So would I if I didn't have my sneaker charm. It makes the most outlandish shoes as easy to walk in as flats."

* * *

><p>When the men returned they discovered Cissy and Deborah seated at a coffee table covered with dozens of pairs of high heels. Both had their wands out and they were charming the shoes. Lucius looked at Snape, who told him "Be prepared for a shoe buying frenzy. I don't understand these female sorts of things and I don't want to understand them either, but I do know that it has something to do with stripper heels. I know enough not to ask for a better explanation because if I did, I'd have to hear the whole sordid story."<p>

Lucius laughed at that. "One day, remind me to tell you about the time that Cissy dragged me off with her to pick out dishes. Dishes. I don't care about the dishes, I care about what gets served on them. Better yet, don't remind me, I don't want to relive that experience. We spent six hours running from one end of London to the other and she ended up buying plain white plates. I swear that sometimes they do it to torture us."

"How do they manage to put up with us? We're so different from them."

"How does one of them put with you, Severus? Cissy tells me that I'm quite charming."

"I have no complaints whatsoever. I'm rather surprised that he wasn't taken already." Deborah walked to Snape and put her arm around his waist.

Lucius raised a glass. "You, my friend, are a very lucky man. Don't ever forget it."

* * *

><p>"I liked them both. Cissy rules that roost, you know."<p>

"I've suspected as much. Lucius is always chasing clouds. He needs someone with a good head on her shoulders to run the show for him."

"He's not a bad sort. But you are right about him being a little snobby."

"Well, he's certainly taken with you. He was trying to get me to tell him exactly how involved we are."

"I hope that you told him that I ride you like a rented pony."

"I was tempted. But I left it to his imagination."

"I'm certain that he has a fertile imagination."

"You have no idea, Deb." Snape smirked. "He believes that we make a wonderful couple."

"I'm liking Lucius more already." They entered the castle gates and leisurely made their way to the dungeon.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17.

Snape couldn't sleep. Three am. He leaned back on a pile of Deborah's too numerous pillows and read by the light of a small glowing ball he had conjured above the bed. Occasionally he would glance over at her and as she shifted in the blankets he would reach out and stroke her hair absently. It gave him a pleasant feeling. He wondered if that was how she felt when she was playing with his hair. His white haired witch, and in the deepest privacy of his mind he would always think of her as such, had led him into a dimension of enjoyable sensations that he had previously only imagined. At times it felt quite foreign to him, being touched with a tender hand. In his entire life he could not remember himself being the object of such attention. Perhaps his mother had felt kindly toward him at one time, but that was long before his memories began.

He directed his thoughts to his left forearm. "Reveal," he whispered. The dark mark rose with it's ugly familiar twists of scarring. He thought back to the night it had been magically burned into his flesh, the staggering agony that had nearly caused him to vomit. "Obscure." The hideous stigma was gone. He pressed his fingers to it. The lingering pain he had always felt when it was touched had vanished along with the image.

Several men had taken the brand at the same time he had. None of them had suffered as he did. For them, the physical pain had seemed to pass quickly. It was not something to ask others about, but they had all spent several subsequent nights in a hastily thrown together dormitory in Malfoy manor, and the rest of the initiates had slept soundly after the evenings of drink and braggadocio. Alone among them he had twisted and tossed in his sheets, tortured, drenched with sweat and choking down bitter sourness. Was he any different from the rest of them, even then? He stared off into the darkness, and as always the darkness held no answer.

He became aware of the tendrils of her consciousness rising through the drifting mists of her dreams. She was seeking him out, mysteriously tied to him even now. He closed his eyes and a soft troubled sigh escaped him. Being connected to another person, connected beyond even physical touch, was a little frightening. He dreaded a day that she might find something in him that would cause her to recoil, to withdraw the love he found himself growing dependant upon.

"It's not going to happen." He turned at the sound of the soft voice and found her dark eyes locked onto his face. "Severus, you should get some rest." The hint of concern in her voice was like balm, light, soothing and warm. He dismissed his conjured light and took her into her arms, following her into her dreams as far as he could. He was losing himself into the drifts of sleep, did she do that? he wondered as his consciousness shut down. They lay together, separate beings yet in some ways as one.

* * *

><p>As always, Snape watched the potions lab for signs of trouble.<p>

He admitted to himself that Deborah's presence had made teaching his first year potions students less onerous. She never led the instructions, but she walked the rows of his lab, correcting mistakes and quietly pointing out techniques that needed improvement. No cauldrons exploded in fury. No hair or robes caught fire. Test results exceeded his expectations. The students had responded to her low key ministrations in a manner similar to the one he had observed with house elves, that of devotion. Even that little brat of a Malfoy seemed to be on his best behavior in her presence. She never raised her voice, never threatened. They simply followed her, like chicks behind a hen. And then she found the drawing.

"Mister Malfoy." The abrupt tone of command in her voice caused Snape to turn his head sharply. "Ten points from Slytherin. You will leave this classroom and return to your dormitory. You will meet with me in Professor Snape's office at eight pm." She held a parchment in her hand. Draco slinked off. The little smartass is afraid of her, Snape marveled.

She caught Snape's glance and indicated the back storeroom with a turn of her head. "Return to your work." he instructed the rest of the class. He followed her into the storeroom.

Deborah handed him the parchment. It was a crude drawing, but the figures were quite recognizable. Himself and Deborah, engaged in a routine that had become familiar, that of intercourse. The facial expressions were ugly and starkly apparent. It was graced with the properties of motion. A murderous expression formed on his face as it reddened. "Here's another for your collection."

"I will wring his neck."

"That is not necessary," she said, touching his arm. "Leave this to me, darling. This one is mine."

* * *

><p>Eight o'clock. The supper hour was over, and as Snape had observed, Draco had shown little of his usual appetite. He had tried to milk information from Deborah, both by asking her outright and telepathically. All he had garnered was an enigmatic smile and a reassurance that the matter would be dealt with suitably. On the dot, Draco appeared in the common room with a smug expression displayed upon his face, one which bespoke that despite earlier appearances he was certainly not afraid of some witch, that he was far happier dealing with her than with the head of house. He entered the office. We shall see, Snape thought as he nonchalantly resumed his reading. We shall see.<p>

A scant five minutes later Draco fled his office, white faced and nearly falling over his feet. His face bore evidence of tears, tears from Draco Malfoy? He left the room. The office door magically slammed shut with a empathetic bang which seemed to shake the high tiny windows. The other little snakes quickly busied themselves with their activities, not wanting to draw angry attention to themselves. Their faces betrayed their shock at seeing Draco in such a sorry state.

Snape continued with an appearance of reading for a few minutes more. Deborah did not appear. Finally, his curiosity got the better of him. I'm going in there. After all, it is my office. He carefully marked his position in the book with the attached ribbon, stood, and walked slowly to his office, taking one glance back at the room. All eyes were fixed upon him. He scowled and all of his little snakes quickly busied themselves with other matters. He entered and closed the door.

Deborah was seated at his desk, a faintly evil smile on her face. The offensive drawing was in front of her, still displaying it's obscene contortions. He drew up a chair next to hers. "Now, what did you do to Mister Malfoy?" he asked as he leaned into her.

She gave him a kiss and smiled. "I made him thoroughly explain it to me." Again, that small terrible smile. "Then I told him that if there was one more reason for either of us to be disgusted with his behavior that I was going to call his mother in to meet with me and he could explain this parchment to the both of us." Snape cringed and felt himself shrivel. He could picture himself if he had been put in the same circumstance, explaining such a thing to his mother…how horrible. It would have been far preferable to have been cruciated than to be forced to live though that.

"Brilliant," he breathed appreciatively. "Simply brilliant!"

"I have my ways," she said. "They are effective."

"Wicked woman." Snape put his arm around her. "Have I ever mentioned how much I love you?"

"Yes, you have." She took his hand. "Severus, I've dealt with vampire field soldiers. Dealing with nasty little boys is a mere walk in the park. An amusing exercise." They shared a small chuckle at Draco's expense.

No more erotic artwork was added to Snape's private file for quite some time after that episode. The word had gotten around, be careful with that white haired one.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18.

"I'm not going to like it here without you. I may drink too much and drown in your pool because I miss you."

Deborah reached up and smoothed his hair. "This time next week I should be showing your around Glas Tann-that's the name of the family home. We'll have an entire weekend to get reacquainted."

"Are you going to fly there?"

"No, I'm going to be stinging because I have a dozen or so house elves to bring along." She put her arms around him and he held her as well. "Stringing isn't as much fun but in this case it's more practical."

"Deb, what is stringing? I heard you mention it some time before, but you've never explained it."

"It's one of those American things. It's a way that you can magically take advantage of the properties of physics, a way you can use parallel universes as a means of travel. Come with me to the other side of the hill and I'll demonstrate the technique."

Deborah, Snape, and a small army of house elves appeared on the far side of a hill, unseen from Hogwarts Castle. She took her wand out and waved it over the meadow below. Ghostly images of some sort of glowing tunnels took shape. They scattered like tangles of yarn, some rising up into the clouds, some entering the earth. He stared at them then turned toward her quizzically. "What are those?"

"Wormholes, or strings, as we call them. They cross from one universe to another. In some universes, my home is thousands of miles from here. In others it is much closer than it is in this world. I'm going to use one of these corridors to get home quickly."

"But how…"

"I'll explain it to you and show you how to do it. Hopefully next week I'll string us home. You won't like it at first, but it is very efficient. I can be in America in a matter of a minute or so if I ride a string." She pressed against him and lay her head on his chest. After a few moments, she pulled away. "I'm just torturing the both of us by prolonging this. If all goes well, I'll be back next Friday afternoon." She made a circular motion of her wand toward the nearest string and a opening appeared. She walked into the tunnel followed by the elves. And with a quick motion of her wand, she, the elves, and the tunnels were gone.

Snape stood for a moment in the deepening shadows of dusk. Then he trudged back toward the castle-he felt like walking, doing anything to distract his mind from the knowledge that she was gone.

* * *

><p>"So, our newest assistant professor has taken a week of leave quite early in the year," Quirrell remarked.<p>

_As you well know, since she was practically teaching your classes for you_, _being that you know nothing of the subject._ Snape thought. He was not in a mood to chat over dinner, particularly not with Quirrell. He pointedly turned his entire attention to picking at his food, dissecting the bits apart and sliding them around on his plate without eating.

"She seems reasonably proficient at defensive techniques. I may ask her if she woudn't mind assisting me to demonstrate dueling tactics. I believe with a little coaching she could manage it." _That I would pay to see, _thought Snape._ She would wipe the floor with you, you cowardly asshole. I don't believe that she would even need her wand to demolish you. She could wish you into a bloody spongy mess. When she got through with you, I might even be sick at the sight. _He shot a dark glance at Quirrell, one that a more astute man would have taken as a warning. Quirrell did not.

"She is a rather attractive witch, don't you think? I heard that she is single. Would you know if she is involved with anyone? I rather fancy her."

Snape stood, pushed his chair in, and abruptly left the table. As much as he would have liked to have throttled Quirrell, he knew that it just wouldn't look right, no matter how much personal satisfaction that act could bring. He walked rapidly to his private quarters, slammed the door closed, and threw himself face down on his bed. Traces of her perfume still lingered in the linens. He buried his head in a pillow, closed his eyes, and tried not to think of her.

His foul mood was interrupted by a tapping at the high dungeon window. Snape pulled his wand out of his sleeve and flicked it open. A crow flew in and came to rest on his nightstand. "Personal message for Severus Snape from Deborah Jenkins," the bird announced.

"Raucous Crow, speak your message."

"Personal message for Severus Snape from Deborah Jenkins. Things are coming together well. The house elves have been doing a magnificent job, little Hoople is keeping them on their toes. Most of the dirt and cobwebs are gone and I'm going to start them making repairs tomorrow. What do you think of cream and blue for a bedroom? Send me an owl and let me know. Take care, Severus. Deb."

The crow watched him for a few seconds then left. Snape pulled himself up from his bed and sat at his desk. Soon, his owl left, carrying an envelope.

_Deb,_

_I miss you. I had forgotten how oppressive this place could be. I came close to choking your colleague Quirrell today. He was trying to pick my brains for information about you. I can't stand the bastard. Any color for a bedroom is fine by me. I'm thankful that Hoople is a help to you, even if I do have to go up and charm the piss (literally) out of the bed wetter's sheets at least twice a night. It's only Sunday and I can't stop thinking about you. _

_Severus _

Snape pulled his clothes off and threw them into a growing pile beside his bed. He anticipated another sleepless night, his third in a row.

* * *

><p>Monday afternoon. Snape had set a personal record for deducting points. Even Slytherin house was feeling his wrath. Two cauldrons had exploded. One student was in the hospital wing, where Poppy Pomfrey was having a time of trying to remove a glowing purple stain from his entire body. Smoke still lingered in the room from another mishap. Snape sat glowering at his desk, daring anyone to whisper, pass a note, or otherwise foul up. There was a tap at the window. A crow. He drew and flicked his wand at the window and opened it and walked rapidly into the potions storeroom. The crow flew after him. He closed the door.<p>

"Personal message from Deborah Jenkins for Severus Snape."

"Raucous Crow, speak your message."

"Personal message from Deborah Jenkins for Severus Snape. Hi, sweetheart. I know that you say that it doesn't matter to you, but the repairs are mostly finished and I have to start redecorating. Which do you like better, carpeting or hardwood flooring? Or would you prefer stone or tile? I need to begin transfiguring materials so that we can get things into place. I miss you. Take care, dear."

Snape let the crow out and returned to his desk, oblivious to the glances the students were giving each other and the furious passing of notes. He pulled out a sheet of paper and an envelope.

_Dearest,_

_I miss having you here. The little bastards have exploded two cauldrons and one of them caught the lab curtains on fire. Another one is dyed purple, don't ask me how he managed to do that to himself, I don't want to know. I hate each and every one of them. I cannot imagine how the rest of the week will go without you._

_Floors…perhaps hardwood in some areas and stone or tile in others with some nice oriental rugs? I do think that you should consider carpeting the bedrooms because stone and hardwood are awfully cold on bare feet when one is making a trip to the bathroom. But really, whatever you decide will be fine with me. Surprise me._

_Love you,_

_Severus._

The dark owl sped away. Snape envied that owl, at least it was going to get to see her.

* * *

><p>The monotony of grading papers on an early Thursday afternoon. Snape had directed the house elves to clean and repaint the office he now shared with Deborah as a surprise and temporarily set up camp in an unused third floor office. He was snapped out of his near stuporous state by screams and frantic pounding. He opened the door and was shoved aside by Dumbledore and Minerva. They raced to the window and frantically tugged to get it open. "Unward it! Quickly!"<p>

Snape performed the unwarding spell. Dumbledore threw open the window and a huge black crow flew and alighted on Snape's desk. "Personal message from Deborah Jenkins to Severus Snape."

"And this is supposed to be an improvement over owls?" Minerva cried, still gasping from exertion.

"Severus, we need to discuss something. We'll check back with you in a bit." Albus had rarely looked so concerned.

"Oh, it's OK. You needn't leave. This will only take a second. Since she's been away sprucing up the ancestral home, wherever that is, Deb sends her crow almost every day. It's always some sort of idea she wants to run past me about interior decorating. I had this office warded for silence while I graded and that is why I didn't hear her bird. Watch this, this is fascinating-the bird speaks her words-it's like a talking telegram that squawks. Raucous Crow, speak your message."

"Personal message from Deborah Jenkins to Severus Snape. Good news, precious, the love shack is ready! It's recess time for the grown folks! Pack your bags, and sweetheart, do not bring that goddamn Snape coat with you. You know exactly which one I mean, the one with all of the buttons. I cannot fathom why you want to wear that ugly thing anyway, it makes your ass look like a baggy old woman's. You are not getting into this house or into anything else if you show up wearing that wretched coat. I'm not kidding. My beloved, I have thought of you constantly. This week apart has been sheer torture. How did I get through it without you? I cherish you always. I'll meet you in the field tomorrow evening at six. Don't bother with dinner, I'm cooking for us."

Snape placed both hands on his face and put his head down on the desk. It almost hid the beet red color washing over his features. Albus cleared his throat and motioned for Minerva to leave with him.

From beneath the window, a riotous laughter could be heard. As Raucous departed a unified chant emerged from the chaotic revelry. "Crow! Crow!"

_There is something so special about awkward moments._

* * *

><p>Deborah awoke at the sound of gentle tapping at her window. I must have dozed off, she mused. The morning light streamed through billowing drifts of lace.<p>

She took the letter from the black owl and watched as it flew home, silhouetted against the brightening sky. At her kitchen table she opened the envelope, pausing a moment to sniff for the slight traces of musky woody scent that infused nearly everything Severus owned. She unfolded the familiar stationery, printed with a Slytherin crest at the top.

_Beloved,_

_I am overjoyed to know that we will be together tonight. I can barely restrain myself from seeking you out._

_Dearest, the next time we are in Diagon Alley it would make me very happy if you would allow me to present you with your first magical owl. They are such elegant animals. I believe that a pure white one would suit you magnificently._

_If you do, however, choose to continue using your current bird, I must entreat you to impress certain things upon him. One is that if I do not notice his arrival immediately, he must wait patiently and not draw attention to himself by repeatedly squawking and flying headfirst into the window-it is distracting to the students when they are practicing their broom skills. Another is that if, by chance, he must wait to be admitted he must not employ obscene language to announce to the students that my parents were not married and that I am a mentally deficient practitioner of fellatio. And kindly inform your vile messenger that he is never to shit upon my parchments again. Never. I am formulating horrific crow-curses in the back of my mind even as I pen these words, just in case..._

_I cannot wait to see you. The hours pass so slowly. I can almost feel your gentle hands cradling my face again-almost. I love you always._

_Severus_

_PS-what in the hell is wrong with my favorite coat, anyway?_

_PSS-your goddamn crow is now a fucking hero. The little imbeciles circulated a magical petition and got him put on a chocolate frog card. I hope that makes you happy. _


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19.

Deborah took a last walk through the house to make certain that everything was in order. As much as she didn't want to admit it to herself, she did care about whether one particular wizard would like her home or not. She paid particular attention to three rooms, bedroom, library, and her own lab, the rooms which would probably receive the greatest scrutiny.

The bedroom walls had been scrubbed free of centuries of grime and repainted a soft cream color with white woodwork. She admired the hand toweled plastering with it's slightly irregular finish. It had been a pain to repair but it was worth the effort. The slight flow in the panes of ancient hand rolled glass would not have married well with drywall. Pale cornflower blue cotton draperies were pulled aside from the tall windows, letting light stream in the room. Corner rooms have their advantages, she thought. A cool cross current moved the curtains lightly, scented by the evergreens that surrounded her home. The room was also fragrant with lavender, lemon balm, and orange peel. She had placed a large bowl of the dried aromatics under the bed. A ceiling fan was suspended above, it's blades turning lazily. Soft cotton rugs decorated the gleaming wood floor. There was a runner from Snape's side of the bed to the bathroom door, so someone needn't be afraid of freezing his little piggies in the middle of the night- she smiled to herself at the thought.

Next, the library. Books packed wooden shelves that spanned from floor to ceiling, many of them bound with age darkened leather that even the house elves could not completely restore. A museum would have fawned over the collection. A section of drawers and cubbyholes housed parchment scrolls from an earlier time. Papyrus scrolls and were housed separately; they tended to crumble unless they received constant magical shielding.

The little elves had done an excellent job of cleaning. The rooms smelled of the lemons, thyme, cedar and bay leaves employed to help keep insects out of the precious manuscripts. At the end of the library sat a translation glass. When placed above any sort of text the glass plate revealed an image of the ancient script translated into modern language. A small cuneiform tablet sat under the raised glass, left as an example for for Snape when he got around to exploring. She smiled to herself-it was a beer recipe. Many of the older ones were.

Finally, the lab. This would be a major culture shock for Snape. The gleaming black marble tables had sinks at every one of the eight workstations and all were fitted with gas outlets. Various types of burners and torches sat on a shelf, ready for action at a moments notice. Other shelves held fireproof glassware and stainless steel vessels. Not a stinking cauldron in sight in her lab, she thought proudly. The back supply room was well lighted and well organized, as were the shelves with completed potions. Her computer sat in a corner near her oak file cabinets, it's collection of floppy discs on a shelf above it. That is going to blow Snape's . He may not care for any of this, she thought. But this is my lab, and it's going to be the arranged the way I like to have it. There is going to be one place in this country where I can do my work without feeling like I'm hanging out in the dark ages. She picked up a small glass bottle of a potion from her desk. If he decides to string here instead of flying, we'll need this.

She took a final pass through the kitchen, pausing make a final check on the contents of the refrigerator. The steaks were marinating, the corn was husked, the salad ingredients were cut up and ready to combine. Beer, wine, mixers were all chilling for later in the day. The baked potatoes and baked beans would merely need to be reheated for a bit in the grill before she threw the steaks on. That wouldn't be ideal, but she was sick of magically cooked food. The bread dough was beginning to rise, it would be ready to bake in a few hours. She checked inside the microwave, the cake she had frosted earlier was in there, safe from Mickey-of all of her pets he was the only one who liked to counter surf but he hadn't figured out how to open that particular appliance door yet. She walked out into the courtyard and checked the grill, there was a full tank of propane so things were set.

Nearly noon, she thought. Mickey caught her attention, rapidly coiling and undulating before her. I'm glad he reminded me, I need to feed the poor baby. She walked to the sunroom and pulled a rat from the shelf where it had been thawing and tossed it to the basilisk. He swallowed the rat in a single gulp then sniffed hopefully for more. Deborah washed and dried her hands in the bathroom then called the house elves together for the trip back. There was no point in sitting around. She was eager to see Severus.

Snape was sitting at the table, pushing his food around on his plate when a familiar whisper asked "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to play with your food?" She slid in beside him and whispered "I missed you."

"I missed you as well. Deb, take a look over there. Quirrell is giving me dirty looks. He fancies you."

"Good grief, Severus, that isn't funny."

"Stop kicking me under the table. Yes he does. He said so. He was trying to get me to tell him if you were seeing anyone."

"I don't know which would be more disgusting, having Quirrell fancy me or if a dog tried to ride my leg. Oh, sorry, I didn't notice that you were taking a drink."

"You did that purpose," Snape hissed. At least it was only water going up into his nose this time. The last time had been vodka and Squirt, and that had burned.

Snape felt a growing irritation at being stared at by a man who he deemed to be an incompetent coward. He was aware that any more animated whispering would likely attract attention, so with a turn of his head he indicated to Deborah that they should leave the table and move to the hall. They passed through the archway and walked a short distance. It wasn't safe for any more than a quick hug, but at least they had that and a little privacy. The discussion resumed.

"Of all the people to go to with that, he had to go to you? What a fool. He must be the last of the staff to know about us. Either that or he was being extremely disrespectful to you, and that wouldn't surprise me. Something about that man doesn't sit right with me."

"He told me he wanted you to help him demonstrate dueling. I was hoping that you would agree" Snape was still imagining that scenario. The possibilities it suggested were so satisfying….

"Please. I would kill him."

"I hoped you would say that."

"Oh, no, look, he had the nerve to follow us over here!" They stopped talking and watched as Quirrell approached them. _Why is he tailing us? He can see that we left for a private conversation._

_No idea, Deb._

"Deborah." Quirrell stood a little too close, behaving as if he hadn't even seen Severus with her. Snape was annoyed. _My god, can't he see that we don't want to be bothered with him? Surely he can see that she's here with me, that we're together._

Quirrell apparently couldn't, as continued to pointedly ignore him and spoke only to Deborah. "I'm pleased to see that you've returned. I am going to teach the class about dueling and I want you to help. I will need to give you some lessons and pointers over the weekend so you can be capable of assisting me in the demonstration."

Deborah felt Snape's growing irritation. _I cannot believe how rude that was._ _He is being openly disrespectful to you, Sev. _She faced Quirrell and spoke pointedly. "I have plans for this weekend. I'll be going away, in fact I'm leaving this afternoon."

"With me." Snape offered her his arm, which she took. They walked away, then Snape turned back and spoke over his shoulder. "Deborah does not need any lessons or pointers in dueling. If you wish to make an ass of yourself then duel with her. Let me know if you decide to. I wouldn't miss that demonstration for anything." He gave Quirrell a parting glare then the couple moved on.

* * *

><p>With an hour left until their only class of the afternoon, the pair returned to the Slytherin dungeon. They immediately went to Deborah's room. She sat on the couch and Snape lay with his head on her lap. She softly played with his hair but her mind was on Quirrell. "It doesn't make any sense, Severus. One day he's a quivery mess if you give him a sideways glance. Another day he has the gall to openly disrespect you in front of me. He acts too familiar with me, as if he knows me. I get the sense that he's hiding something, and that's another creepy thing. I can't read anything from him except that and a sense that he's laughing at us. I should be able to read someone who acts as weak as him with no trouble. Are you getting anything from him?"<p>

"I get a sense that he's up to something and that he is hiding a great deal. I also get a sense of familiarity, but I can't place it." Snape sighed. "I'm going to see if Albus can shed some light on this, but that can wait until after this weekend.

"This weekend." Deborah smiled as she thought of it. "Sev, do you like to ride?"

"What kind of riding are we talking about? Please, not brooms."

"Horses." She continued to absently stroke his hair. "Do you enjoy riding horses?"

"I've never been on one. Being pulled by thestrals in a carriage is as close as I've come. I wanted to ride a horse when I was a kid, but there weren't many opportunities in Cokeworth."

"I think you're going to enjoy riding."

* * *

><p>The luggage had been delivered to Deborah's home by house elves as they spoke. When she entered the lab for their last class she had been surprised to see an envelope on Snape's desk bearing her name written in a childish hand. She looked to him, he shrugged his shoulders. She opened it to find a Raucous Crow chocolate frog card. When she showed it to Snape he scowled.<p>

No cauldrons exploded. There were no fires. All went well for the first time in a week. Snape was getting fidgety, but no one received a detention, no points were deducted, and soon the students were dismissed and they could be on their way.

"How do you want to get there? String, fly, apparate, you choose." Deborah studied the chocolate frog card while she awaited his reply. She did like the portrait of Raucous Crow striking a rather heroic pose on top of a stack of parchments.

"I'd like to see what stringing is all about." Snape busied himself putting papers away and securing the lab.

"In that case, this is for you. It needs to be taken about fifteen minutes before we get into the string. It prevents nausea. The first few times you use wormholes it can be fierce."

He took the bottle and smelled the contents, then took a tiny taste. "Lemon balm, basil, ginger, chamomile, fennel seed. Those are the ones I can pick out right away, but there are others."

"Yes, potions master, I have my very own lab and I do know how to put them together. It won't hurt you."

"Is it really needed?" He didn't particularly like the idea of taking the potion, but not because he thought that there was anything wrong with it-he could tell that it was expertly crafted and complexly balanced. But to him it seemed ridiculous that she could possibly think him to be so delicate that he needed such a thing before travel.

"Yes, it is really needed. Stringing is far different than anything you've ever experienced. I can't even describe the sensations well. After you've done it a few times you will know what to expect and you won't need any sort of potion. But I guarantee that if you don't take that before we leave you will be sicker than you have ever been before. You will spend the weekend vomiting."

He ended up taking it, not because he felt he needed it but because she simply refused to find a wormhole until he did. They stood at the edge of a field near Hogwarts and Deborah revealed the string network with her wand. She selected one and opened the tunnel. She put her arm around him and asked him to hold tight to her. Together, they stepped in and she closed it behind her.

Snape nearly jumped out of his skin. As far as he could tell he was standing upright, but it felt like gravity had gone crazy and he was spinning like a fan. Vertigo set in almost immediately. A weird pulsating sticky feeling covered his body. He felt a saltiness in the back of his mouth and a sensation of salivating profusely.

The trip only took about ten seconds, but when they got out of the wormhole he was grateful that he had taken the potion. Even so, he felt as if he was going to vomit, but that passed quickly. Deborah had him sit on a rock and she stayed beside him, taking his hands in hers. A little pressure to the right areas on his inner wrist stopped his nausea. He had heard of acupressure but that was his first experience. She put her arm around him and waited until his breathing became normal. "It will be easier the next time."

He looked up and surveyed the surroundings. They were at the edge of a forest of pine and yew. A path skirted the demarcation between trees and field. He could smell the evergreens and earth but he could also smell the sea. We must be close to a coast, he thought.

"Where are we, Deb?"

"Southwest of London, right on the coast. Heavily protected from muggle eyes by magic. Do you feel well enough to walk yet?"

"I'm fine now." The effects had worn off very quickly, probably the potion had a great deal to do with that. He was going to have to get that recipe-most nausea potions made him drowsy but hers did not. For all of her denials, she was an expert at compounding.

Deborah took him by the hand and led him to a grove of huge gnarled trees. The needle litter underfoot gave him the impression that the copse had existed for centuries. She stopped and pointed to a conspicuous scar on one of the ancient trunks. "I'm going to show you how to get into the house now so that you don't need me to come here." She placed her hand over the scar. "All you will have to do is put your hand on top of this scar and speak the phrase my wards are keyed to." She put her arm around his waist. "Ready?" Snape nodded yes."

"Beam me up, Scotty."


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20.

For once, he was too surprised to care if he appeared to be astonished.

To his right the ceiling rose to an incredible height, fifty meters. To his left, a metal spiral stairway passed through perhaps a dozen levels of floating platforms with no visible means of support. Curtains cloaked some of the platforms. Others were enclosed. Some were totally open, merely floors.

"This is one of the three parts I added," Deborah told him. It doesn't fit well with anything else, but then the entire house is piecemeal. There have been dozens of people who made additions over the centuries, so everything is jumbled and all thrown together. It's nothing like Malfoy manor here. But it has it's own charm."

She walked to the iron stairway and he followed and stood beside her, still taking in the room. The stairs began spiraling upward, lifting them though the levels. Most of the new platforms were bare, and when he asked about their functions she told him that she hadn't decided quite what to do with them. "I'm not sure that I'll even leave this the way it is. I needed a new entrance and I wanted to play around a little with style. That is why I was reading the book you found so boring the other day. I wanted to try something totally different."

On the top level, a walkway bridged the span between the platform and the wall. Deborah walked rapidly to a door. Snape looked down from the gut wrenching height but followed, unwilling to appear afraid. She sensed his unease. "You can't fall and get hurt from this, Sev. Even if you jumped off. The whole thing is set up to lower you slowly to the ground. It's fun to jump off. I've done it several times." She led him into what appeared to be a utilitarian hall constructed of tile and concrete block. She paused at a metal door. "This is the second of my additions." She entered a numerical code into a metal keypad and the door clicked unlocked. She led him in.

Snape didn't quite know what sort of room he was viewing at first. The arrangement was totally unfamiliar. The walls gleamed in sterile white. The entire room was brightly lit from above by even rows of florescent fixtures. He did not know what to make of long dark tables with sinks spaced at intervals. He inspected the metal fittings rising out of the marble and was baffled. He walked to the end of the room and Deborah tapped a code into a keypad to unlock the back store room. This room he did recognize from the familiar aromas of the stored ingredients. He headed back to the main room and took in the shelves of containers and unfamiliar instruments. In a sink near the entry door he found a few pieces of glassware soaking in a sink full of soapy water. Faint odors lingered in the area, lemon balm, ginger, and chamomile.

"It can't be," he muttered to himself, shaking his head. He looked the room over again. Workstations, stools, equipment…

Deborah walked to one of three appliances that Snape did recognize as muggle refrigerators. The one she pulled open bore a conspicuous red warning sign-biohazard. She drew out a couple of cans of Rolling Rock, flipped the tabs, and handed him one. "Ah, the taste of home. You look as if you can use one." Snape tasted his beer and decided that the taste of home probably resembled cold dragon piss more than it resembled a decent brew, but he wasn't in a frame of mind to be picky. He took a long draught from the can and continued to try to reconcile what he was seeing with something more familiar. "It's my lab, Sev." Deborah perched on a stool and grinned. "Welcome to the twentieth century."

She arose and took him over to the computer and booted up Windows 3.0. Sliding in a floppy disc, she showed him how she kept most of her potion recipes stored. "It frees up room in the lab if I don't need a ton of books. I can print a sheet out to take to my workstation as needed." She did so as a demonstration. Snape held the sheet of paper and was quite impressed with the efficiency of that aspect of the setup.

"What do you use for cauldrons and fires?" Deborah set up a Pyrex beaker over a Bunsen burner, connected it to the gas supply, and lit it up. She spent several minutes showing him various other sorts of equipment for heating. "This isn't like magic. This is more like science," he said after a few minutes.

She smiled at him. "The way you do things is science as well. Sixteenth century science. Brooms, multiple apparations to get anywhere, cauldrons-it all was state of the art magic at one time. Now I can be just about anywhere in the world in a minute or less by stringing. I don't have to dig through books for potion recipes, I do a search for the file on my computer, print it out and take it to my table, and I'm ready to go."

"And this is how the rest of the world works with potions?" Snape looked around the lab.

"A great deal of it does. All of the new world for certain, much of Africa and Asia as well."

She had anticipated several possible reactions from Snape, but never the one she saw now. A pensive downcast expression appeared on his face. "Sev, what's wrong?"

He spoke softly. "This place makes me feel hopelessly out of date."

She took his hand and led him into a small room toward the back of the lab. She sat down on a beat up looking couch and he sat next to her. "You're drawing the wrong conclusions. Your knowledge is not out of date." She drained the last of her beer and tossed the empty can into the trash basket across the room. "Two points," she said absently.

"If you would make a potion in the Hogwarts lab and I made the same one here, they would work the same way. Your knowledge is not out of date. You know how to compound ingredients effectively." She stood and asked "Ready for another one?" Snape nodded and she came back with two more cans of beer and handed him one. "Here's an illustration of what I'm talking about. This can of beer." She held it up for inspection.

"If I had this beer in a keg and had to tap that keg and pour it off into a mug and drink it, the beer I had in that mug would be the same nasty beer that is in the can that you're holding. The product itself is the same. The technique for storing and serving is where the difference lies. Now, say we sat down here and you used a cauldron and fire and I used a pyrex beaker and a Bunsen burner and we each cooked up the same potion. The knowledge is the same. The product is the same. The technique is different, and my techniques require less effort. You're not out of date. There are some newer techniques and newer tools that could help you achieve the same results more quickly and efficiently. That's all." She took a drink of the beer and sat back down next to him.

"This type of lab is what I'm familiar with. I feel out of place in the Hogwart's lab. But my knowledge of how to make potions hasn't changed. I can still work effectively there. You can work effectively here. The instruments and methods are unfamiliar, but those only take a few minutes to adapt to. Anyways, directly above this lab is a Hogwarts-style lab, the very one which inspired me to make this one more modern. You're welcome to use either of them any time you wish. And if you want to use this one there isn't a piece of equipment in this place that will take you more than five minutes to learn how to use. I can teach how to travel by wormhole in a half hour or so. The techniques on these things are easy to learn. A hell of a lot easier than learning how to ride a broom. Now, that is ghastly. And I have another place I want to show you before I start on the food."

They left the lab and walked to a large door at the end of the hall. She tapped it an it raised and admitted her into another hall, one that had carpeting, high ceilings, and gleaming woodwork and hand plastered walls. She pulled open a heavy wood door.

When Snape saw the library it was love at first sight. Like a kid in a candy store, she thought. And there he goes, directly to the curses section, a man after my own heart. "Like it?" she asked.

"Are you joking?" He browsed the different sections now, discovering the foreign language texts. She showed him how to use the translator, a piece of technology he had no qualms about adopting. He was amazed at how even the delicate manuscripts yielded their secrets easily. "Did you see these?" he asked her. He pulled out a box of papyruses. "These have to be at least a couple of thousand years old. I can't believe that you have cuneiform tablets in here." He put the box back and went to another shelf-rows of treatises on the dark arts. "I've never seen anything like it! This is far better than the school's restricted section!"

"My ancestors liked everything wrong and never threw anything away. This isn't a bad place to hang out on a rainy afternoon, and I'll show you how to string here and set the wards so you can drop in and use this room any time. But for now, I'm going to run to the kitchen for a minute. If you would like to come with me, fine. If you would rather stay in here and look around while I get dinner on, that is fine too."

"You really don't mind if I stay in here?"

"Not at all." She sat back on a heavy oak table. Watching me cook is scarcely entertaining. I'll be back in a minute anyway, I'm going to start the rolls baking first off. The rest of the food will only take a few minutes after the bread is out." She walked up to where he was standing reading and put a hand on the back of his waist to get his attention. When he turned to her face she said, "Seriously, I want you to enjoy yourself while you're here."

Deborah left for a few minutes then returned. "If you're ready, let me show you the bedroom." She took him up a stairway, plain non-magical wood as far as he could discern, and led him through a door.

He was pleased with the room as soon as he saw it. It was light, open, and breezy. The bowls of herbs under the bed lent a clean pleasant scent. She walked out of a door and onto a long porch with white railing. The sea could be seen a couple of hundred meters or so in the distance. Snape took in the view. "I like this. So far, I like all of it."

"I do too. I'm happy that it's finally fit to have you here." She watched the surf roll onto the beach. "Hogwarts is a great place but I feel like when we're there we're living in a fishbowl. Except for when we're in our rooms, if we want to talk or touch hands or even stand out looking at the sky it's as we have to look around all of the time to see if anyone is watching us. I'm sick of being on display and having hundreds of kids watching me eat. I don't like feeling like an exhibit. Here it feels as if I'm free. No observers, no schedule." Snape nodded. Even more so than Deborah he was a private person. The house felt like a welcoming refuge from the ordered world he had known for most of his life.

* * *

><p>"Severus, I believe that muggle-cooked food agrees with you. I've never seen you eat like this." He was clearly enjoying his dinner.<p>

"It's all good. And, like you, I would rather not be on exhibit while I eat." Snape had done the entire spread justice. Perhaps a little too much justice. He was comfortably stuffed.

Deborah cleared the table with his help and loaded the dishwasher. "A fine invention." She turned it on and washed and dried her hands, then he followed suit. "Now, I'd like to show you the oldest part of this house. It's my family's original home."

She led him down a series of stairs to a heavy oaken door. "This part of the house has been ours for over two thousand years. Take a look." She pulled it open.

A large dry cave stood before them. They walked in and the were surrounded by rock walls lined with thousands of quartz crystals. The floor was some sort of flat rock set into the earth. "It's a massive geode. This is the heart of the house. The crystal cave."

"Merlin's crystal cave? The real one?" Without realizing it, Snape's voice had fallen to a whisper.

"Yes, it was his, and it was in my family before his time. Generations of witches and wizards have been in this room and worked their spells. It's passed into the legends and most people believe that it's only a myth. But as you see, it's quite tangible." She lit some candles and the glassy walls danced with the light. "If a place can be magical, this would be it. This is a place that those like us truly belong."

A faint scratching of scales, a slipping sound whispered at their feet. Snape looked down to see a dragon-like face on a snake's body with a ridiculous tuft of feathers at the end of it's tail. "Well, look who decided to come to the party. Severus, meet Mickey, the basilisk. He won't bite." The creature rose before him, it's head as high as his chest. Hesitantly Snape held out a hand toward the reptile. The basilisk sniffed his fingers then rubbed against him. He stroked the sinuous animal and it made an odd purring sound. "Consider yourself fortunate. When a basilisk accepts you it will guard you with it's life. Usually it takes a year or more for that to happen. I've never seen one take to someone that easily. They only befriend those they believe to be trustworthy." The basilisk leaned against his leg and trilled an oddly bird-like song. "Few wizards have ever heard a basilisk sing to them. It's a sign of devotion. You're a unique man, Severus Snape." The basilisk formed it's body into a loop around his feet and watched him with it's liquid golden eyes. "If you ever need protection, call his name. He can hear you and come to you no matter where you might be; they have that type of magic in them. You've made a powerful ally."

That night they made love in a room scented with herbs while a cool breeze carried the sea air over their bodies. Gauzy curtains billowed around the bed. Snape fell asleep to dreams of walking through a forest of pine and yew. Deborah was beside him, both in his dreams and in her own. Sometime late in the night a sleek creature slipped into the bed and curled it's body at their feet. The basilisk purred and guarded the ones he held to be his own, as his instincts commanded.


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21.

Deborah awoke and Snape was gone. OK, she thought to herself, where has he gotten himself off to? The door to the porch was open, that seemed like a good place to start her search. She retrieved a dressing gown from her chair, pulled it on, and went out.

A surprising sight greeted her. Snape was lying back in a lawn recliner reading a heavy leather bound book. That part wasn't a surprise, but the cut off denims and t-shirt were. Snape was painfully self conscious and modest in his usual surroundings and would not have allowed a glimpse of his bare legs at Hogwarts, but being at Glas Tann brought out a different side of him, one that was more relaxed. She smiled at the sight. It took a place of sheer magic to get him to behave normally. Mickey the basilisk curled in his lap with it's neck stretched up and lying across Severus's shoulders. The little animal's head was pressed against his cheek, giving the impression that the creature was reading along with him, although that was not one of it's abilities. Deborah stroked his hair to get his attention. The basilisk immediately slid it's head under her hand. Jealous little thing she thought. Snape looked up and she bent to kiss him. The basilisk wormed it's way between them. She laughed. "You won't be able to shake that wretched animal loose now."

"He's not so bad." The basilisk purred and lay it's head on top of his defender. "He woke me up this morning and I couldn't go back to sleep, so I went down to the kitchen and fixed something to eat. I hope that eggs won't hurt him. He was begging."

"He's always begging. He's nothing but a head, a tail, and two meters of gut." She sat in the chair alongside of him and the basilisk glided into her lap. "Scaly little monster." The little serpent appeared to almost grin. "Eggs won't hurt him, he practically worships them. You have made yourself a friend for life there."

"Did you know that this book was written by Salazar Slytherin himself?" Snape pointed out a curse. "Wicked stuff. I knew that he had a reputation for dark magic, but I had no idea he was into this kind of thing." She read the passage. Magical flaying. "I would have liked to have known that one in my fourth year."

"I imagine you would have," she commented. Snape turned the page to an illustration of the results. "Ugh. There's something to tape on the icebox door when I'm trying to lose weight."

"That or a picture of our friend Quirrell, with his manky drawers wound around his head." Snape smirked. "Oh, I'm sorry, your friend. He doesn't fancy me at all." He ducked but she still managed to swat him.

"I know just the potion to fix that." She grinned wickedly. "And I happen to have a large store of stink oak nuts."

"You wouldn't dare."

"I would, and don't you ever forget it." She got up and started indoors. "Come on, Sev, you need to get inside. Your nose and cheeks are getting red. I'd hate to take you back with a bad case of the sunburn. People would talk about us."

"They already do." Snape touched the bridge of his nose and found it to already be a little tender. Maybe Deborah has some sunscreen like the muggles use or some sort of potion for this, I'll ask her. He marked his place in the book with the ribbon and followed her inside.

He surprised her again by cooking breakfast. He made eggs, chips, sausages, and toast. Deborah complemented him on the meal-it was unexpectedly good. Where did he learn to cook? she mused. She ate and smiled at the sight of him eating his second breakfast of the day, as he usually had little appetite. It will do him good, she thought, he could stand to pick up a little weight. The greedy little basilisk groveled and begged pitifully and put away two raw eggs. "Cooked eggs won't hurt him Sev, these things are like living garbage cans, but raw eggs are better for him." She glanced at the basilisk lurking under the table, hoping for something to be dropped. "He's growing fast. He's already far larger than I thought he would get."

"I thought they got huge." Sev said as he poured himself some more tea. "How large were you expecting him to be?"

"About two meters long is what I expected and he's already a bit more than that. It's something that you can't predict exactly. M-i-c-k-e-y's mother (it was safer to spell out his name or use another indicator to prevent being 'basilisked' as she called it, swarmed upon by an excited serpent) is only about six meters long. She's one fourth Chinese dwarf dragon and three fourths ball python. His father is a ball python, they call them royals here. He's about a meter and a half long, and that is a decent size for the species. 'You-know-who' there and his sister have both been turned out larger than I thought they would be. Just goes to show that you can't ever tell."

"Where is his sister?"

"Reuben has her. He's wanted his own basilisk for years. But most of them aren't easy to keep, they get to be extremely large because the few people who breed them usually breed an European dragon to a giant snake, like a Burmese python or a Retic, to get a basilisk. I have a basilisk out of that sort of breeding in the States right now that is over forty feet long-that is around twelve meters-and still growing. That is your typical basilisk. It's venomous too, like the European dragon. Mickey doesn't appear to be venomous and he's still looking to finish out small. I can't see him being much larger than three or four meters when he is full grown." She smacked the little basilisk's nose when it tried to swipe food from her plate. "The more dragon they have in them the meaner they are. In the past basilisks were all first generation crosses. That is what gave them their horrible reputation. Those ones are terrible to try to work with."

**LINE**

Deborah was saddling the horses, explaining the tack to him. "I'll do this the first time," she had said when he moved to help. "You concentrate on riding until you get a feel for it." She had handed him a bottle of sunscreen. "Be generous, paleface. You will wish you had if you miss a spot." Inwardly he grumbled, glad that he was getting better at blocking her mind. Deborah had a very few habits which annoyed him, but one was a tendency to try to baby him. He took the bottle and began to rub it on. He knew that 'she who must be obeyed' simply wouldn't budge from the barn until he was coated in the unpleasantly girly smelling stuff.

Deborah stood back, inspected the horses, and let the stirrups on the Appaloosa he would be riding out another notch. The curiously spotted animal swished it's tail. Papoose, the horse she would be using, snorted and stamped it's back foot. "He's a good one but he's a little bit too much horse for you right now." Snape hoped that the lazy mare she called Snoots wouldn't be too much horse. As much as he had looked forward to the ride he was getting a little anxious as the time grew nearer.

"One last thing before the big event." She motioned him into the tack room. She pulled a cowboy hat off of a rack and stuck it on her head. "It's for shade, makes it easier to see," she explained. "Pick one." He examined her hats. A black one with a plain silver band appealed to him. "Black, of course," she commented. She sized it a little larger with a flip of her wand and handed it back to him. He tried it on and it felt right. He stepped over to the tackroom door and the dirty mirror. "Quite a sight there," she said dryly. "Snape in a cowboy hat. If your students could see you now."

She led both of the horses into a small fenced area she had called the corral and tied Papoose to the fence then led Snoots in. "OK, Severus, moment of truth." She held the mare's reins, showed him where to put the toe of his boot and he awkwardly mounted the animal, which appeared to take no notice of his hesitant movements. She had him stand on his toes in the stirrups then let them out another notch. "I'm going to lead her around so you can get a feel for the movement first." I must look like a total idiot he thought. Professor Snape on his first horsey ride.

_You look…cute. That cowboy hat is so you._

He groaned. Why did he feel as if this was going to be one giant joke at his expense?

Snape took to riding as if he had been born to it. It surprised him. He had never been around animals except for his owl and the revolting Raucous Crow. But horses were different, they were quieter. The gentle sway of the mare's walk was calming. The view from higher up was definitely better. Deborah led with her nervous dancing horse and the mare followed with little direction on his part. It was a little unnerving when they rode a narrow path down to the sea but the mare moved quietly and surely on. They halted with their horses standing in the surf, Snoots quietly and Papoose pawing and snorting.

Deborah rummaged in her saddlebag and brought out a camera she had purchased in Diagon Alley and took a couple of snapshots of him sitting on the mare with the sea in the background. He wanted to take some of her and she passed it to him-he had a harder time of it because her spotted mount kept tossing his head and moving. When they turned for home he felt a little disappointed. He wanted to ride all day. But Deborah, with her ever protective habits, had insisted on keeping the trip short. "You don't realize it but when you ride you use muscles that you don't normally use walking. If you overdo it the first day you're going to wind up sore." At the corral he had asked for the camera back and she handed it over. He set it up to focus and frame by itself-there is one thing you don't know how to do, he thought smugly- then rode to her side. The camera took several shots of them together. Later that day he looked over the pictures. He was framed against the ocean in a couple of them, not smiling but with a peaceful expression of content on his face, one that looked odd on his features. More pictures-Deborah grinning at him, Deborah looking off into the distance, perhaps at the gulls swooping in the background. The best of all were the pictures of them together. They were sitting on the horses, looking into the camera at times and at times turning to glance at each other. He hadn't been aware of it at the time, but the proof was there. He was smiling.

Later that night he discovered exactly what Deborah had meant about the muscles that didn't get used much. The insides of his thighs were aching sorely. She took pity upon him and ran him a hot bath with various herbs and healing oils, and she washed his hair and his back for him as he soaked. He leaned back into her hands as she worked her fingers through his soapy hair. Being babied a little isn't a totally bad thing, he admitted to himself. And he had only sunburned slightly.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22.

They were awakened by thumps on the window glass. Shrieks and curses, muted as they were, could be heard.

"Raucous Crow," she muttered. She opened the window and a crow flew in and sat on the headboard.

"Personal message for Deborah Jenkins from Reuben Grey."

"Raucous Crow, speak your message."

"Personal message from Reuben Grey for Deborah Jenkins. Hey, Deb, it's Ruby. Hear me out before you chase the crow away. Wayne has really done it this time.."

"Out!" she shouted at the crow. The bird flew off and she slammed the window shut. Mickey slid to her, trying to get into her lap. "Under the bed!" The little creature fled.

"Deb?" Snape's voice was heavy with sleep. He watched her go to her dresser, pull out a pack of cigarettes, dig in the bottom of the drawer for a moment, then light up. Her hands were trembling so badly she was barely holding on to the cigarette. She seldom smoked, and had never seen her that angry.

"Family drama. I'm headed downstairs. Ruby will be here any minute." She pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed the lighter and the pack of cigarettes, and headed for the stairs. She turned back as she reached the door. "We'll try not to be too loud. If you want to come down it's up to you, if you want to stay up here, then by all means do so. I would if I could." He could hear the sound of her bare feet on the wood stairs as rushed down the steps.

Snape weighed his options. It clearly was none of his business. Then again, he had been invited..…and curiosity won. He sat up and stretched, dressed quickly, and reached the stairs as the knocking began. From the top of the stairs Snape heard her open the door and recognized Reuben's soft voice greeting her as he entered. The pair went into the kitchen and Snape could hear a wooden chair scrape the floor as someone sat at the table.

"What's the story this time?" she asked Reuben as she brought out squatty old fashioned glasses. She retrieved a bottle of Drambuie from a cupboard and poured a hefty shot into each glass. She pushed one in front of Snape as sat with them. "Not what I usually save the Drambuie for, but it's what is handy. Anyone who doesn't want theirs slide it over here. If I'm going to be revolted, it might as well be chased with good liquor."

"Another kid. Far worse than before." Reuben wrapped his glass with his fingers as he spoke.

Deborah lit one cigarette from the butt of the last one and took a long drag. "Is Eric on the way?" Reuben nodded.

Deborah sighed. "To fill you in, Sev, I have two brothers. Eric is on the way here now, and Wayne is the family embarrassment, a pedophile who has apparently been caught yet again. I'm guessing that the knights have him." Reuben nodded.

At the knock, Reuben went to the door and a cloaked man entered the kitchen. "My brother Eric," Deborah explained. She made the introductions and slid him a glass, which he promptly filled and drank from. "OK, who knows what?" she asked.

The tall white haired wizard shrugged his shoulders. "I just woke up. Ruby's crow told me to come here." He looked toward Reuben. "Do you know what's going on?"

"I just got a crow a few minutes ago." Deborah took a sip of her liquor.

Reuben sighed. "It's as ugly as it can get. Wayne is under guard. He lured the Archer's ten year old son Kyle away from school. He thought he wasn't seen, but the cameras near the busses caught him and a couple of kids saw them leave together. Kyle didn't come home and after his parents asked around they called the knights and started hunting Wayne. They've had Wayne for about four hours, and a half hour ago they found the boy. He's still alive. He was beaten nearly to death, sodomized, and left for dead. The kid is a wreck but he could still talk when he was found and he positively identified Wayne and when the empaths checked everything out they get the same story."

"Oh my god." Brother and sister both visibly recoiled at the news.

"And now the squib squad is trying to get Wayne out?" Eric asked.

"Lawyers," Deborah whispered to Snape. "Of course they will be," she said. "We can't have one of the unfortunates sitting in jail."

"I don't see any way of him walking on this one." Reuben took a drag off of his cigarette. "God, he's a nasty piece of work."

"The kid? Eric asked. Reuben nodded. "I know it's got to be bad, but how bad?"

"He wasn't conscious when I left. That's all I know. Debbie's old friend, Victor-I can't remember his name-had checked and verified his memories and statements just before the healers took him in."

"Victor Black."

"Yeah, that guy, Eric, the one you used to call spider legs. That's the one who found Kyle. Looked like it was all he could do not to leave and go strangle Wayne."

Eric put both elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. "Here we go down this road again. This has to stop. It's time for a DDR."

Deborah nodded slowly. "I'll back you."

Reuben made wet swirls with his glass on the table, not looking up. "I can't see any way out of it. There is no way to save him this time."

"What's DDR?" Snape asked.

"DDR is deliver, destroy, and restitution," Eric explained. "I'm head of our branch of the family, Deborah is my second. Since Wayne has been found guilty by memory review, Deb and I can choose to bypass the knight's trial and justice and give him over to the Archers to do with as they see fit. It's only done in the case of the most horrible crimes. Crimes like this one. Then, we'll pay restitution to the family for the hospital expenses and do whatever else we can do for their son."

Eric took a drink and leaned back in his chair, and met Snape's eyes. "There is nothing Deb or I can do to make this right. The Archers will certainly kill Wayne, and he deserves it and that might make them feel somewhat vindicated but it won't really help Kyle. But it's their right. I would want the same if some pervert attacked my son." Eric looked over at Deborah. "Are you sure you want to back me on this?" She nodded. He turned back to Snape. "Let's just say that Deb and I are not going to be held in high regard by anyone back home, at least not in the main family."

"Yeah. Here's to the family. Our brave new world." Deborah raised her glass in a toast then drained it. "It never ends." She threw her head back and stared at the ceiling. "How many times have we been put through hell trying to clean up after Wayne?"

Eric nudged his sister. "I remember the night you got married." Deborah's face fell. Eric turned to Snape. "Wayne decided that his sister's wedding night would be the perfect night to shoot windows out downtown, get arrested by the regular nil police, and run his mouth about our kind." He indicated all present with a motion of his head. "Fortunately he was drunk. Three AM on my sister's wedding night, she and her husband and Ruby and I had to go to the nil police station and get Wayne out. Ian and Ruby convinced the cops that he was crazy, and we managed to get him transferred to one of our medical facilities for treatment." He sighed. "I remember how much work it took to clean that one up." Eric yawned and stretched. "I have to get back. My kids will be waking up soon and I'm going to have to think of a way to explain this to them. I don't want them to find out when they get to school."

"You might want to keep them home today." Deb put out her cigarette and picked up her pack. "Eric and I need to talk a couple of things over before he leaves." The pair got out of their seats. "I'll be back in a few minutes," Deborah said and walked outside with her brother.

* * *

><p>Smoke hovered around them in layers. Reuben sat at the table, his cigarette burning itself out in the ashtray. He took a sip of his Drambuie. "Go ahead, Severus. Ask away. I'm starting to think we were left here for that purpose."<p>

Snape had the same sense of things. "Wayne is a squib?"

"Yep. These super pureblooded families throw their nils though you don't heart them talk about it much."

"I'd think they wouldn't throw them."

"They're as inbred as lab rats. Look at Deb and her brother. Neither one of them has much power behind their magic, and they're both exceptionally good hitters for purebloods. Most of the others are far worse. They're also both adequate fighters, but that is because they're very good at reading their opponent's thoughts and because they both fight dirty as hell. They cheat as easily as they breathe. It's the only way they can win."

"Wayne. He's done this before?"

"Not like this, but several times he's gotten touchy-feely with kids. Eric and Deb cleaned it all up before, paid off the parents, paid for counseling for the kids and got Wayne locked away into treatment He has always been released as safe to be in the community. He never really was, went back to his old tricks time after time."

Reuben sighed. "For the last hundred and fifty years or so some of the older families have been on a kick where they're trying to improve their genetics. Selective breeding. But they did it as stupidly as possible. They bred for the physical qualities they thought would make a good wizard, for appearances. Someone way back when decided that a good witch or wizard was tall, thin, had black eyes and black hair that turned white at a very early age. Must have seen a woodcut of Merlin in one of their coloring books." Reuben laughed sarcastically. "Because after all, we all know that is exactly what the very best witches and wizards look like. Now, take a look at Deb and her brother. He's what they want-six foot four and white hair and he's not yet forty. But then there is Deb. She is all of that except for the height. She's right around five foot one. So she's considered an genetic liability."

"They do that to their own children?"

"They not only do it but they're proud of themselves for doing it. The kids don't get a say in it, they're born and it's too late to do anything about it. Deb, Eric, Wayne-none of them asked to be selectively bred like a litter of show dogs."

Reuben lit another cigarette. "I don't have a horse in this race, I'm not a witch or a wizard. But when this Wayne business has been settled, I'm going to invite you over to my place for a weekend, Deb too if she wants to come." He sipped the liquor. "But you in particular." He pointed at Snape. "I think you need to see what happens when too many generations of wizards get hung up on pureblooded bullshit. It's probably not what you think it would be like. On one had they don't discriminate against part bloods or squibs. They protect their squibs, more than I think they should, like they know that they've done them wrong through their breeding programs. But on the other hand they've bred themselves a big heap of magical retardation trying to make themselves perfect."

He blew a series of smoke rings and absently stabbed them with his finger. "They've done some amazing things with technology. Did you know that they call you witches and wizards over here the magical Amish? You've never developed technology that integrates with magic. But your people never had to. So many of the wizards and witches back home are so weak that they have had to do the research and either find out how to make electricity and other energy sources compatible with magic or kick everyone into the nil community and stop using magic completely." Reuben pulled his knees up and put his feet on his chair, resting his head on his chin. He caught Snape's odd look and grinned. "I never could sit still for long," he grinned. "Or sit straight on a chair." He sighed. "With the squibs they produce and the all of their culls they have a lot of people who need to be kept occupied and many of them get paid to do research. Spend enough time and throw enough brainpower at almost any problem and you'll find a way around it. "

Reuben knocked back the last of his drink and got up from the table. "It's late and Deb doesn't keep my kind of food in her fridge." He laughed at Snape's grimace. "I'm headed back to the States. Could you tell her that I'll send the crow to let her know when I hear something?"

"Yes." Snape thought a second. "Is Raucous Crow your crow or Deb's crow?"

Reuben gave a wry smile. "All personal message crows are named Raucous Crow. And they all act exactly the same. Revolting creatures." He left the house and a moment later Snape stood at a window and watched a faint network of strings appear in the fields then fade a few seconds later.

* * *

><p>She was standing on the back porch when he walked around the house to look for her, leaning on the rail and smoking. "Reuben left."<p>

"I saw the strings. Eric is gone too." She stared off to where the faintest light now reached the undersides of distant clouds. "I suppose I should be expecting a crow this evening."

"He said he would let you know what's happening." He put a hand on her back. "I don't know what to say."

"I get that a lot. Welcome to my world."

They went back inside and had just sat down to the table when someone began pounding to be let in. "Now what?" she asked as she answered the door. A tall angular man swiftly walked in past her. "I hope the fuck you're not going to try to get that son of a bitch off again this time!" His voice sounded like a low growl.

Deborah sighed. "It's good to see you too. Eric and I agreed. We're going to DDR."

The visitor's hair was long and black shot with pure white, falling in a thick braid to his waist. He was a rough looking man with no softness of feature or expression, a man who looked as if he could lash out with little provocation. His eyes darted about constantly. He wheeled when he saw Snape. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Vic, this is Severus, a friend of mine. Sev, this is Victor Black. He is the one who found the boy who Wayne abused." She turned to the visitor. "Leave him be, he's not part of this. Why'd you come here?"

"To make sure that you don't pull strings again to get that perverted brother of yours released." Victor said tersely. "DDR sounds like a plan. It's about time." He strode rapidly out the door, slammed it shut, and there was a brief flash of strings and he was gone.

"At least he doesn't stay long when he visits." She returned to the table and began dumping ashtrays and clearing glasses. She opened the windows. "Stinks in here," she observed. "Too many smokers." Snape silently agreed. Deborah wiped the table down. "New location, same old crap. Wayne. He's spent his lifetime running my brother and me around getting him out of trouble. This time there isn't any going to be any getting out. He's done."

"Why did the two of you ever help him out of trouble in the first place?"

"From the time we crawled out of our cribs it was pounded into Eric and me that we were the oldest male and female and would be responsible for the family good and welfare. It's how our society runs. Then Wayne came along and not only was he the baby of the family but he turned out to be a squib. So we were doubly obligated to protect him." She sighed softly.

_He played us year after year, pure and simple. It's the way he punished us for being the ones with power, both family head power and magical power. He's been nothing but a source of humiliation for us. And if we didn't defend him that made us the monsters-feeding our poor helpless squib baby brother to the sharks. Eric will take more heat for the DDR than I will because he still lives in that community. He has a son who is not showing any signs of magic either, and believe me, people are going to tell that boy all about how his father sells out the family squibs. It's going to be a big deal, all about family honor, not fulfilling our obligations to protect the family squibs, the whole mess. And the least important thing in all of this is going to be what happened to the kid who got raped and tortured. I should be over there right now trying to do something for him and I can't think of what I could possibly do. And even if I could think of what to do, I couldn't face the kid or his parents. _

* * *

><p>They lay on the bed, but sleep was impossible, they were too restless. Deborah dug into a lower nightstand drawer and pulled out a photo album. "Let me show you some of my family."<p>

A picture of a dark haired baby swaddled in pink. He looked more closely. The first few white hairs were visible at the front of the hairline. "You?"

"Yes. Considerably younger, of course." She turned the page. There were some more pictures, mostly kids with their pets. Deborah pointed out a family picture. A tall white haired man was seated in an ornately carved chair, he had a cool powerful appearance. A lanky woman with streaky grey hair held an infant and stood near his side. A young boy sat in front of the woman on a plain wooden chair, was the woman his mother? His hair was already grey. A girl, perhaps four or five years old, leaned against the seated man's knees. Her hair was streaked with white. "My family. The baby my mother is holding is Wayne."

She turned a few more pages. A picture of her with much whiter hair now, standing in front of an arbor, obviously a posed photograph. A brown haired man stood beside her. "Ruby." Snape looked closely and could pick out the familiar features despite the far different hairstyle. "I was sixteen, that was one of my school dances. Ruby was my go-to guy if I couldn't get a date and I did the same for him when he needed a date."

Another few pages. They came to a formal portrait of Deborah in a long white gown. Her expression was defiant, as if daring anyone to criticize her. A tall man with long red hair was standing beside her, holding her protectively. "Ian," she said. "My husband and Ruby's brother." More pictures-people dancing at the wedding, Deborah and Ian cutting a wedding cake. Next there was a snapshot of Reuben sprawled in a corner… "Drunk," she snickered. "Wasted."

She closed the album and sighed. "I didn't mean for you to have to listen to the family mess. I had planned for a better weekend than this has turned out to be."

"Deb, come on. Let's go to your lab."

She gave him an questioning look. "Why?"

"I'll show you."

* * *

><p>Snape set a Tirrill burner on the black table top and hooked it to the propane supply line. He lit the burner then set a tripod over it. After filling a beaker with distilled water, he placed it on the tripod to heat. Then he headed back to the supply room and returned with a dish full of various botanicals which he dumped into the simmering beaker. When he looked back at Deborah she was grinning at him. "Even the magical Amish are capable of reading a lab manual when they wake up early," he said with a smirk.<p>

"I can tell that Ruby G. has been running his mouth again."

"He has." Snape rummaged through a couple of drawers. "Where do you keep the funnels and filter papers?"

She went to a cupboard and pointed them out. "Pick what you want."

He selected his supplies and picked up another beaker and took them back to the station. "I have to admit, pyrex does have it's good points. You can see the color develop more precisely than you can in a cauldron." He turned the gas off to the burner, and set the funnel and filter up in another beaker. He lifted the hot beaker with tongs and poured the contents through the filter. "Where should I put this to cool?"

"Stick it in the biohazard refrigerator." Snape gave Deborah a sharp look. "There aren't any hazardous materials in there," she explained. "Ruby is a snoop. But he's afraid of invisible cooties."

"Ah," he murmured and set the strained potion in to cool.

"Is it OK to start cleaning this stuff up?" Deborah asked. He nodded. She opened the washer door and started placing the equipment into the racks. Snape walked over to watch her as she worked.

"And this washes and dries everything?"

"Like magic," she said. "Only it's not."

* * *

><p>Snape came out of the bathroom with a couple of small paper cups. He divided the potion between the cups and took one for himself and handed the other to Deborah. "I can't sleep either." He took a sip.<p>

Deborah tasted hers. "Lemon balm coming through strong-can't miss that slightly furniture-polish undertone. As for the rest, I'm getting hops and that is about all that I can pick out individually. Wait a minute…celery seed?"

"Yes."

"I give it about a four out of ten for flavor. But if it works, great." She finished it off.

"It works." He drank the rest and tossed both of their cups in the wastebasket. Deborah undressed and climbed into bed. He read for a while then followed suit.


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23.

It was five in the afternoon before Deborah fully awakened. Snape was gone; she vaguely remembered him getting out of bed sometime earlier and she thought she had heard the bathtub filling . After stretching and yawning she headed for the shower. She stood under the steam for long minutes, hoping that the water would help clear her head. She emerged, towel dried her hair, then ran her fingers through it to somewhat straighten it out. After throwing on a t-shirt and shorts, she went downstairs and took a can of soda from the refrigerator. The cool liquid helped revive her.

Reuben's crow came with it's message and left. The news had been expected. I should go back and help Eric, she thought, but she couldn't. It would be difficult enough to attend the execution of her own brother. There is nothing I can do for Wayne, his fate is sealed and he has hated me his entire life so he won't want to see me.

She started looking for Snape. He wasn't in the library, so she checked the labs next. No sign of him.

She walked outside for some fresh air. Pausing for a few of minutes on the porch, she glanced across a small stream and toward the barn. The horses were milling around at the top of the pasture hill and she watched their movements for a couple of minutes. And then she saw him.

Snape was riding bareback on the spotted mare. The horse picked her way downhill carefully, nodding her head as she walked. For someone who has never ridden before, he's doing amazingly well, Deborah thought. The appaloosa was kid broke and would never have tried to buck or run off with him, but still, most people wouldn't take a horse out on a halter and lead rope only, particularly if they were so new to riding. As she watched him guide the horse she had to smile. He looked free and content, as if he hadn't a care in the world.

"I was sure that I'd find you in the library or in the lab." she commented as he pulled the horse to a halt and slid off.

He unsnapped the lead rope and let the mare walk away with the rest of the small herd. "I decided to take a ride to look around. When did you wake up?"

"I've been awake for twenty minutes or so. I had a soda, Ruby's crow came, and then I hunted around for you." She stifled a yawn. "My brother and I are being excoriated in our press as evil people who betray the family squibs, pretty much as expected. Of course, if we had tried to protect the family squib we would have been the evil people who protect rapists. The Archer family accepted our offer of DDR, so I imagine that Wayne will be dealt with within the week." She rubbed her forehead as if it was painful. "I had nightmares about that poor kid he attacked last night." She sighed. "I'm going to have to talk to Albus when I get back and let him know about this mess. I'll have to take off for a day for the execution and then there will be a day or two when I have to go back for signing papers."

"What papers?"

"To make the restitution settlement with the kid's family."

She watched the horses as they made their way back to the top of the hill. "I feel like I need to do something but I can't think of anything. What do you do when your brother rapes someone? Send flowers?" She smiled grimly. "I have no clue what to do. I don't want to offend them when they're going through a horrible time and I don't want them to think that I don't feel for them either."

"You aren't the guilty party."

"No, but I feel like I need to do something. How would you feel in my place?"

He stood next to her. "I don't know. I was an only child."

"If it weren't for Eric, I'd envy you."

They walked back to the barn to put the lead rope away. Snape asked about who took care of the animals since he had seen no hired help.

"It seems that there is a house elf overabundance and Albus was more than happy to some from the dozens that have been dumped off at Hogwarts. He says that they're swarming with them. I found two who like to do outside work, and it suits me fine to have them. I sent them to Hogwarts for the weekend so we could have some privacy, back when I was expecting this to be a good weekend."

"I didn't think it was bad. Especially not the horses."

"I'm glad that it wasn't a total disaster then. Are you going to wear that cowboy hat back to Hogwarts? The students will love seeing you with that. It matches your favorite outfit." He touched his head- he had totally forgotten that he was wearing the black hat. She laughed at the thought of the cowboy hat paired up with the frock coat, pictured him strolling through the halls of Hogwarts. Her thought were rudely interrupted. "Hey, that hurts!"

Snape had swatted her with the hat.

* * *

><p>Deborah sat at a workstation in her lab and watched Snape as he made the anti nausea potion for the trip back. She had printed him off a list of the instructions and ingredients. "It's what I do when I make it. That saves me from making trips back and forth to the screen."<p>

"Where did you come across this formula?" he asked. "This is excellent."

"A woman my brother works with gave him that one. Best one I've ever tried and it tastes far better than most of them."

"What does he do?"

"He's a manager at a research and development company. It's a place where they develop new technology in various magical fields. That particular potion recipe came out of their labs. It was never used, though."

"Why not?"

"It's not commercially viable. To make it worthwhile to mass manufacture it has to have at least a two year shelf life. None of the apothecary shops will carry anything that doesn't hold that long. That particular potion is good for about nine months to a year. And seriously, with dozens of commercial potions that work almost as well it's not something that someone would make except for home use."

The idea sounded odd to him. Ingredients varied in strength and needed to be adjusted to make them optimally effective. Some ingredients lost strength after even a few months. "So people walk into an apothecary and buy pre made commercial potions?"

"For most things, yes. They aren't going to wait around for headache potions to be made to order. Most of them will buy an off the counter potion or a bottle of aspirin."

Snape pulled the potion off of the heat to cool before bottling. He started to get up and Deborah motioned for him not to. "I'll get it for you. What size is the beaker?" He checked. "Two hundred fifty milliliters." She pulled an empty bottle and cap from the shelf, a funnel and went to the filter papers. "Medium grade filter?" He nodded as he stirred it with a glass rod to cool it a little faster. She sat and watched as he finished filtering and bottling the mixture.

"Are you starting to like this lab?" She watched for his reaction.

Snape surveyed the room. "Some parts. The glassware is an improvement over cauldrons in a few ways. It's much easier to see what I'm doing. The lighting is better." He pointed at the computer. "That device should be tossed into the abyss from whence it came. Solitaire works, but 'help' gives inaccurate advice. I suspect that it is deliberately misleading me."

Deborah watched his expression for a few seconds. A smirk appeared. "Humor? Was that a joke?" Another smirk confirmed her suspicions. She slid off of her stool and pretended to stagger to the biohazard refrigerator. "Want a Heineken?" She pulled a pair of green glass bottles out and held them up. He nodded. That was another improvement over his lab. Deborah's lab was stocked with cold beer, even if her idea of a brew was practically water.

"Why did you build so many workstations for a personal lab?" The accommodations clearly exceeded her needs. It was far more than even he could make use of.

"It really isn't only my lab. I also set it up for my brother, for Ruby, and for any friends who might come over. My brother makes a few things for his own use and he likes to experiment with plant growth stimulators and modifiers. Ruby does know his way around a lab, it's the main thing he does when he decides to be useful. Once he gets started he is amazing. Also, I wanted a nice sized lab even if it's only to play around with. I hate little cramped rooms, especially if I have to work in them. I can't stand a tiny kitchen either. Plus, a huge lab looks so much nicer." Snape arched an eyebrow. "At least I didn't do it in Star Wars wallpaper like Ruby suggested. Snape's lip curled unpleasantly at the thought, but it sounded like something that Deborah would do, and Reuben appeared to have the same unfortunate whimsical leanings.

Deborah went to a cupboard and pulled out a wire bound notebook. "One of Ruby's," she said. "He won't care if you look at it, he shows these to everyone." She thumbed through it to a dog eared page. "This is one I've tried. It works." Snape took the notebook and began to read. "The boomerang potion? It doesn't say what it's used for."

"Ruby likes to give his originals cryptic names. That is a great one. I'll get Ruby to make it for you the next time he comes out and you can see for yourself what it does. I'd make it for you but it's fairly tricky, I'm better off letting him make it. It doesn't help either that Ruby's instructions aren't always the clearest." She pointed to another formula, also in Reuben's copperplate hand. "That's one that you might be able to put to good use, the magnification potion."

"What does it do?"

"It temporarily amplifies reception for any other sort of thought reading abilities. Most of the potions I've seen that try to do it don't work but that one does."

"You've tried it?"

"Yes. He has another one that strengthens a person's ability to resist being read." She flipped a page over. "This is good too. The 'viewmaster' potion, I love the names he gives these. You can pour a little on the ground any object or animal you will get a sense of significant events that have transpired linked to them in the past several days."

If the potions worked as she described, they would be extremely useful, he thought. "Deb, how could I get in touch with Reuben if I wanted to ask him a few questions about some of these potions?" He kept thumbing through the book, trying to figure out what they did from the names. "A few of these look like modifications to common formulas, but some of them are unique. He does this as his specialty?"

"Has for at over one hundred years." She chuckled at the look on Snape's face. "His sort lives longer than we do and they age more gracefully. Ruby's been around so long that he probably had a Snape coat when it was in style." She had to grin at the sight of the dark look he shot her. "If you want to get in touch with Ruby all you do is send out a crow and lay out the alcohol. He loves to drink and he loves an audience. He'll talk potions with you until you never want to see him or another potion again." Deborah stood and walked to her desk. "If you want, take that with you. I'll leave Ruby a note that we have it. He doesn't use those books anyway. He has most of that memorized." She scribbled out a note and taped it to the computer screen.

Snape placed his finger on another entry. "What does the 'blending elixir' do?"

"No clue, never tried it. She went to the cupboard and he followed to have a look. Inside there were stacks of notebooks, a shoebox full of folded bits of paper, and a pile of what looked like letters in the back. "This is Ruby's filing system. Everything goes into a shoebox or a pile. He moves around so much that I've kept his papers for him for years. These are pretty much the same as he left them at my last house. He keeps some of his supplies and equipment back here." She showed him a closet stacked with cardboard boxes, most of which were labeled in marking pen with 'sex toys,' 'implements of torture,' or 'explosives.' "Ruby's humor. This is the stuff that he will get pissed about if you touch it without letting him know first. God only knows what he's got in those boxes. I won't even look in them."

* * *

><p>The trip back to Hogwarts was uneventful. The effects of stringing, while still unsettling, weren't as intense as the first time. Still, Snape was thankful for the potion he had brewed. He could imagine how horrible the experience would have been without it.<p>

Upon arrival, Deborah had gone directly to speak with Dumbledore. Snape went on to the quarters and ordered meals from the house elves. She had returned a short time later and had no appetite, pushing the food around on her plate as she stared into the distance. He tried to reach her mind and couldn't, it was as if it were locked. Several times she seemed as if she were ready to say something, then the blank look would return.

"Deb."

She turned her head toward him. "I'm sorry I've ignored you. My mind is elsewhere. I feel like I'm going a little crazy."

"I doubt it."

She put her chin in her hands. "One minute I can put all of this business with Wayne aside and forget it. Then it really hits me. My brother is going to die. I keep thinking of all of the times that Eric and I tried to get him to change. All of the doctors, the clinics-I keep wondering if there was anything we could have done and didn't."

"Even when he was little there was something wrong with Wayne. He looked like any other kid. Some of the time he acted like any other kid. He didn't come with a sign that said that something was terribly wrong with him. But we always knew that there was."

"We all fought among ourselves when we were kids. I think that anytime you get more than one kid in one place that there are going to be fights. But even when he was very young, before he even started school, he wasn't like us. Eric and I would get into it like cats and dogs and then an hour later we would be thicker than thieves. Wayne would get into an argument or fight with someone then wait for a chance to do something to them, not some petty kid's revenge either."

She parted the hair on the side of her head with her fingers and showed him a long ugly scar above her ear. "Wayne did that with a garden rake. He was seven. I had beaten him at Monopoly the day before and he said that he was going to 'fix' me. I was sitting on the patio one minute and the next thing I knew it was three days later and I was in the hospital. He had simply walked up behind me and hit me with everything he had. Eric was inside the house and heard when the rake hit my head, the crack it made was that loud. He said that when he walked out Wayne was standing watching the blood pour out of my head and smiling like he had won a prize. That was the first time Wayne went for counseling."

"A year later, Eric went off on a trip with the other kids in his class. Wayne was too young to go, and he felt that it was somehow Eric's fault that he couldn't go. A week after he came back, Wayne stabbed him in the chest with a steak knife while he slept. Eric nearly died. Wayne went away for a couple of months and came back on some sort of medication. It didn't change anything."

"I had a pet snake when I was a kid. I've always had reptiles, I always liked weird pets, that is just how I am. One day I came home and found my snake nailed to my bedroom door. My father had to kill it-it had about a dozen nails in it. Wayne was sent away again, and blamed me for that. It was only a stupid snake is what he said. If I was any kind of a sister I wouldn't have made a big deal about a dead snake."

"My father tried to get him to change. There was a long string of treatment centers, of psychologists, of psychiatrists. Eric and I shared a room from the time I was 12 years old until he went to wizarding college. We did it because that was the way we felt it was safe to sleep at night. My mother had long been sent away because she was as crazy as Wayne. I never brought friends home and neither did Eric. We were afraid of what Wayne might do to them."

"Eric went to college the year I turned 15. One day I was in the back yard cutting some roses for the house and Wayne tried to shoot me with our father's crossbow, for god knows what reason. He missed. I didn't. I got him with a cruciatus. If my father hadn't heard him screaming, I probably would have killed him then. I still can't understand why I didn't use avada kedavra, maybe because I wanted the bastard to suffer like he made us suffer. Oh, god, you can't imagine the stink from that. My father hit me-it was the only time he ever did. I was sent away to live at a boarding school for witchcraft for using dark magic on my poor defenseless squib brother. I don't think it would have come to that except that my father blamed himself for Wayne being the way he is because he married my crazy mother. All of those goddamned pureblooded chickens came home to roost."

"It's been a black comedy of fucked up disasters ever since. My father died a few years later from a heart attack, and I truly believe that dealing with Wayne is what really killed him. After that, Eric and I had to deal with Wayne. He was constantly in trouble, usually the kind that comes from trying to hurt other people for the joy of hurting them. He enjoys that sort of thing. I used to think that it came from being a squib and if he had been like the rest of us it might have been better, but it started long before anyone could tell that Wayne was a squib. I guess it was better that way. If he hadn't been a squib he would have been another Tom Riddle. At least as it turned out he couldn't tear up as many other people's lives."

"Eric and I have spent well over a million bucks through the years getting Wayne counseled, committed, and paying off the people he's hurt and we'll be spending at least that much more over what he did this time, and that part isn't important to us. We were extremely wealthy from day one, we both inherited real fortunes; we were born into a great deal of extremely old money. That isn't a burden. But Wayne has still gotten what he enjoys most, to torment us. He'll go to his death happy, knowing that he got to ruin a kid's life and that he's left us to have to try to clean up his mess in a big way, and knowing that we can't. That's the story of my life. Even dead, Wayne wins again."

"Come on, Debbie, you need to get try to get some rest." Snape took her hand and led her to the bed. She undressed mechanically, mindlessly, throwing her clothes at a chair. He brought her a potion he had in his bathroom. "Drink this. It will help."

She smelled it. "What is in this?"

"I'll tell you tomorrow." She shrugged, drank it and lay down, curling onto her side. Snape blew out the few remaining candles, undressed and climbed in beside her. She leaned back against him and he held her. Long after she fell asleep and long after his arm went to sleep from the weight of her head he held her. He stroked her hair until his hand slipped onto her shoulder and sleep overtook him as well.


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

A man sat in a corner of a basement. The bench beneath him was hard. A cot stood next to the wall opposite the bench.

He was an unpleasant looking man, smiling in a way that made others uncomfortable, an effect he relished. Although a young man he was already balding. A fringe of greasy grey hair dangled from the sides and back of his head, dirty, lank, and repulsive. He exuded a rank odor of sweat and of clothing worn too many days. He picked at the crusts underneath his filthy hair, occasionally inspecting his nails for blood or scabs.

The attached bathroom remained unused except for bodily functions. Why would he care if his foulness offended? They should be grateful he didn't treat them to the sight of him taking a shit. Perhaps tonight he would, he mused. He relished being offensive. Others held little significance for him. They were raw materials, to be used as he saw fit. Occasionaly he did things to them solely for the amusement their pain brought. They fit his purposes or not, they could be discarded or not-however he chose to act. He stood and walked to stretch away the stiffness of inactivity. His captors noted the activity but did not respond. After all, they were guarding a squib. They stayed on their side of the room, warded against a variety of unpleasant smells and utterances.

Wayne began to shout, loudly enough to penetrate the light sound warding. The guards looked up with expressions of disgust. "I went last," one said. Victor Black stood from the card table and walked to near where the prisoner stood. He undid the sound wards and asked "What do you want this time, Wayne?"

"I want to fuck your niece, Knight Black. Her little friend Kyle won't be up to the task for years, him being so young and being _laid_ up for a while, oh, how _wrong_ of me. I didn't really _mean_ to say that." Wayne smiled broadly then licked his lips dramatically. Swearing vehemently, Victor applied doubled sound wards and went back to the table where the other guard sat with an expression of distaste mixed with dark amusement.

"I'll be glad to see that four flusher on his way down the pipes." Black nodded his assent and moved his chair so that his back was to the captive. I don't even want to look at the bastard, he thought. He can't be dead soon enough.


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Faint sounds came from the attached quarters, the sound of several voices kept low. Snape stretched then pulled himself up from the bed. Deborah was gone, evidently she had been gone for some time as the spot where she had been lying was cool. He pulled on his clothes quickly. The door to absinthe alley had been left slightly ajar, so he knew that it couldn't be students with some late night malady he was hearing. He realized that he had forgotten his slippers when he stepped off of the bedroom carpet onto the stone floor shared by the corridor and Deborah's sitting room but he was too curious to waste time going back.

He entered the large room to find a meeting of some sort going on. The furniture had been reconfigured. Deborah sat at the end of the usual leather couch. Reuben and the wizard who had captured Wayne were on another one, no doubt transfigured for the occasion. That wizard looked visibly ill, injured perhaps? He was curled into the end of the couch, wearing a short sleeved t-shirt. The skin on one side of his face and one arm appeared to be too thin, too pink. Reuben was pulling an afghan up over the man. Victor? That was what Deborah had called him. His eyes were closed, he was breathing too slowly and deeply for natural sleep.

Eric sat on a third couch with a man and woman Snape had not met before. The couple must have been married, they wore matching bands. They were holding hands and appeared tired and afraid. _Kyle's parents, _he caught from the swirl of thoughts in the room. The boy who had been attacked. But what were they doing here?

Deborah's eyes met his as he crossed the room and sat next to her. "Wayne escaped from the knights."

Eric leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "It gets even worse. Turns out, our baby brother was keeping a secret from the rest of us. He isn't a squib after all. He hid his powers. That's how he escaped."

Eric filled in the story for them. Wayne had used a spell to conceal and smuggle a wand into the basement holding, a spell no doubt learned from watching his father, his siblings, or Ruby-the 'hiding in plain sight' spell; the one Snape had observed Deborah using before with wands and with his dark mark. Nobody had felt it necessary to check a squib closely for magical contraband when he was detained. He had been held behind confining wards in a cellar guarded by two knights. The knights had placed sound wards on the confinement due to Wayne's perverted taunts. They had their backs turned to him to avoid watching him commit increasingly revolting acts. They were caught unaware when Wayne pulled out a wand, disabled the wards, and attacked. One knight had been seriously injured by the burning curse and was in an intensive care unit in one of the American hospitals for magical beings. Victor had been less badly burned and the odd appearance of his skin was due to some accelerated tissue regeneration treatments. He had been drifting in and out of a heavily medicated sleep for the past hour. With the wards down, Wayne had disapparated. Kyle Archer had already been moved to a German facility, not so much for fear of Wayne, as the boy had been heavily guarded all along and the guards knew that they were dealing with a wizard now. Rather, Eric explained, it was going to be difficult protect him from the American media. The crime had been sensational to begin with and with the added drama of the escape and after learning that a supposed squib had hidden his magical abilities for so long, the press was going berserk looking for news about the victim and his family. "Our newspapers and scandal sheets are running pretty much anything that comes to mind and any rumor that someone whispers loud enough that they can hear it. It's gotten very ugly."

"Victor is going to be staying at the house for a couple of days to get back on his feet, and Ruby will go along to make sure that he's cared for. The damned reporters won't be able to bother them there."

* * *

><p>They were finally alone. Eric had led the Archers away from the castle and picked up a string and took them to be reunited with their son. Reuben and Deborah had gotten Victor to her home and settled him into a spare bedroom. She assisted Reuben in making some healing potions and ointments he would need and then she had returned.<p>

She slipped into the bed alongside Severus, hoping not to wake him, but he rolled to drape an arm across her body. She turned toward him and pulled herself closer. "We tried to keep the noise down so we wouldn't wake you. But I left the corridor open a little so you could hear the talking and wouldn't get up and walk in there without being dressed for our unexpected company."

Which was exactly what he likely would have done, he thought.

"I can't understand why your brother would want to pretend to be a squib and hide his abilities for all of those years. Why would anyone want people to think they had no powers? I can't imagine what sort of reason someone could have for doing that." The thought of wanting to be known as a squib was unpalatable. Usually squibs wanted to be seen as wizards.

"I can," she sighed. "To give him more control over my father and the rest of the family. My father already felt guilty about having my mother institutionalized when Wayne was a baby. Wayne played the squib advantage to the hilt. I know that lacking powers doesn't have advantages here, but where I come from the squibs have no responsibilities and lifetime entitlements. Had Wayne been a wizard openly he would have been held accountable for his behaviors all along. He was diabolically clever, now that I think of it. By pretending to be a squib he got away with crimes that someone would have killed him for if he had been openly magical. He also avoided having to be sent away for school or any possibility of being called upon to fight like the rest of us were."

"No one ever suspected him?"

"No. The only sort of sense that any of the family ever picked up off of him was a sense of being around something disgusting and sick. He was such a pervert that all anyone saw was a monster. Something that you didn't want to try to experience vicariously by reading him. We all blocked him out as much as we could. We didn't even want to eat at the table when he was there. In a sense he was so repugnant that he taught people not to read him."

"How strong do you think he is?"

"Not very as far as what I've heard, but then he might have been faking that too. The burning spell he used should have killed both Victor and the other guard and it didn't. They were totally unblocked when he hit them, they should have gone up like paper in a fire place."

"What happens now?"

She thought for a minute. "As soon as Victor is in any condition to do so he'll start trying to track him down. It should only take a couple of days before he's recovered that much, especially with Ruby hovering and clucking over him and pouring potions into him. Trying to find Wayne will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. He has had access to a great deal of money since he was a teenager. He could have several million stashed away somewhere. Enough to hide out indefinitely. Eric, Ruby and I will do what we can to help out, but from now on this is going to be mainly Victor's project. I feel sorry for him because he's going to take a lot of flak for the escape. I can't fault him but there will be plenty of people who do."

"I do know one thing, Sev. The rest of us are going to have to find some sort of location to work from. I can't have the house or our quarters here turned into Grand Central Station. It isn't fair to you to lose sleep over my family's mess, and I don't want to have you caught up into any more of this business."

"I've dragged myself back here half dead on several occasions and no one ever bothered to see if I was breathing or not the next day. Then you come along and you're upset about me losing sleep." He smiled at the absurdity of someone being so concerned about inconveniencing him. "I'm not delicate, Deb, you don't have to worry about me. Usually, when we lose sleep I thoroughly enjoy myself."

"I still don't like having my family's drama affect you." She checked the time. "Five thirty. We would have to get up in an hour anyway. Would you care to lose some more sleep?"

"Sleep is overrated," he murmured and began nuzzling the side of her neck.

* * *

><p>Victor and Reuben sat on the porch watching the horses graze in the pasture. "I can't believe that I was so stupid," Victor said, shaking his head slowly. "I should have known there was some reason the bastard was being particularly disgusting. He played us perfectly. He acted as if he weren't concerned about being caught at all. I thought it was only Wayne doing his usual crazy thing."<p>

Reuben turned to him. "Nobody had any suspicions, not Deb, not Eric, not even the head judges. You might want to think that you're so much better than the rest of us at reading people but you're not. No one suspected that Wayne had any powers, not even his own family. Kicking yourself in the ass over this isn't going to undo what happened." Reuben leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "The first order of business is to get you ready to roll. Then we can start running Wayne down and dealing with him."

"We?" Victor raised one eyebrow and stared at Reuben.

"We." Reuben smiled, a thin bitter grin. "I've always disliked that hateful little prick on general principles, but he went and made it personal. I have a score to settle with him, and you know how vindictive I can be. Now, if I were a sick fuck, where would I go? I think I'd seek out the company of other sick fucks and I have a good idea of some places where I might find some."

"Don't go flying off playing the vigilante, Ruby," Victor warned. "If he's with the underground bunch it's going to take more than just you and me to bring him in."

"I have no plans to try to pull him in by myself. I need to find him first. He could have learned about a few spells on his own but he would have had to find someone to teach him how to use them. That narrows the field down quite a bit. As vile as Wayne is there aren't going to be that many people who would tolerate his company." Reuben pointed out to the field. The spotted mare was running the fence with her tail held high. Papoose was close behind, his neck arched and snorting. He approached her rump and she squealed and kicked at him. "That mare is finally coming into heat and he's not quite sure how to go about breeding her. She's a day or so away from ready. I'm going to have to send Deb a crow. She'll need to put Snape on one of the geldings for the next few days if he's out here. That old girl is going to be a bitch to ride for the next week."

Victor pulled a cigarette out of his pack and lit it up. Reuben started to speak but he cut him off. "I know, I know, and one isn't going to make any difference." He took a long drag. "What do you think of that Snape character anyway? He seems an odd sort for her to get hooked up with."

"As if we have room to talk about someone else being an odd sort." Reuben watched the horses as he contemplated. "I think he's doing the same thing we are. Watching and trying to figure us out. He seems alright from what I've seen of him. He's hiding more than he's showing, that's for sure. And around the lot of us, who could blame him?"


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26.

A sleazy looking man climbed up the narrow steps and out of the ground. Acres of woods and brush surrounded him. He smiled at his own cleverness. He had created the perfect lair for himself.

He tossed two black plastic garbage bags in the back of his rusted pickup and drove toward the house, the place where the few people who even knew of his existance supposed that he lived. The bags went into the dumpster at the end of the long country lane. Wayne picked up his mail, or rather the mail of Fred Cox, whose identity he had taken on long ago. Junk mail, mostly. A book of the month club selection. A credit card bill. Fred had seemed to continue to conduct his business long after his death, nearly five years ago to date. It had been such a boon to Wayne, to find someone who closely resembled his appearance and who led a relatively isolated life with no close family ties.

The first Fred Cox, originally from Monroeville in Pennsylvania, had been amazed that someone would pay off his moderately large gambling debts for such an insignificant service-to buy a chunk of run down property for him at a tax sale. As Wayne had explained to him, it wouldn't do for him to buy the property outright. That would be one more thing for his bitch wife to try to snatch from him in the divorce proceedings. No, Wayne was a cautious conservative type of man. He invested in good old cash, hidden in various locations, none of them accessible to the evil bitch Sylvia, or so he told the original Fred. Wayne wanted this property for hunting and fishing, wanted it so badly that he was willing to pay dearly for it to keep it free and clear from the ex for a few more years, until the alimony payments were finished. He might even put a few rustic cabins out there and make some change renting them. Fred, the real Fred, allowed as he could see potential there. The real Fred had bought the property and settled the taxes with Wayne's money. Wayne had been the one to move in after poor Fred had met with a most untimely and secret end.

So now the acting Fred Cox, AKA elsewhere as Wayne Jenkins, owned his 120 acres of almost heaven West Virginia. His scattered cabins on one side of the road brought in enough official income from the hunting and honeymoon crowd to satisfy the taxes, and his under the table cash discounts brought a little more. He made a few charges here and there on his Fred Cox credit cards, paid them off each month, and moved small sums of money into his Cox accounts regularly. He curried the favor of a small number of good old boys, folks who admired his survivalist bent, folks who didn't mind doing some off the books construction work for his underground shelters for generous sums of off the books cash. He publicly left the area periodically, allegedly to do his consultant work, work which explained a bit more of his money. What kind of consultant work did Fred do? Curiously, no one around him knew, but then it wasn't something that needed to be known whenever cash exchanged hands. One contractor who did the most hidden of the excavations and construction had died suddenly when his car crashed into a creek at a remote location. The crash site was not in the immediate area of Fred Cox's property and no one had any reason to suspect that the contractor had been going to meet Fred Cox at a discrete location to talk over the deal on yet another clandestine job. It was never shared with any of the locals,and anyways, it was safer and more profitable to mind you own business in that neck of the woods. The unoccupied tenant house was regularly reported as drawing a small income from rentals, the taxes and utility bills were paid, and the man who had run the power lines from the tenant house to the underground dungeon was dead.

If anyone had been able to see the entire scope of Fred's dealings, it was almost magical the way things fell into place for him. Bad luck, pure and simple, hounded anyone who stood in his way. Few bid against him at tax auction time and piece by piece Fred's holdings grew to over five hundred adjacent acres of backwoods and brush, nearly all undeveloped on the surface. People still came and worked on his constructions but somehow forgot that they had ever been in his employ. Trees and brush grew up at an amazing rate over his diggings and buildings. Fred kept to himself mostly but stood a round at the local bar often enough to be well thought of. Fred himself was nothing to look at, with his long greasy grey hair and his often unwashed clothing. But when you did a deal with Fred, it seemed that you had gotten exactly what you asked for, even if in retrospect you should probably have asked for more or when you couldn't quite remember all that you had done. You can't blame a man for paying what you're asking for a piece of land when you asked for too little. And surely Fred had nothing to do with the misfortunes that caused you to need to sell land or perform services in the first place.

Fred loaded a few bags of groceries and some boxes into his banged up Ford truck and headed back into the woods. An opossum was dining on a run over rabbit near the berm of the road, and with a quick jerk of the steering wheel the opossum joined his supper as part of the gravel road carrion buffet. Fred smiled as he drove towards his hidden stronghold.

* * *

><p>After a routinely boring day of work, Deborah caught a string out to the house alone to check up on Reuben and Victor. Snape had stayed to take a short nap before going over written exam papers-the loss of sleep over the past two nights was finally catching up with him. When she arrived, Reuben was in front of the house trying to direct two basilisks to follow a trail. The pair of young serpents was not cooperating; they appeared to believe that he was playing some new game with them, one that consisted of them making lazy circles around him while he shouted then knocking him over. "Mickey! Dorothy! Stop!" he commanded. The basilisks continued to romp in the yard. "Come here!" The basilisks turned their attention to him and began sliding and flopping on top of him.<p>

"Having fun yet, Ruby?"

"No. All they want to do is chase each other around." Reuben pulled his jacket off of a fence post and walked with her up onto the porch. They went inside and let the basilisks continue to frisk on the lawn. "I hate when they're that age. They won't listen at all."

She glanced out the window and laughed at the antics. The tiny Dorothy was chasing Mickey, fangs bared, in a show of mock ferocity. "I take it that Victor is doing well if you're out training basilisks."

"Yeah. He's still sleeping most of the time, but when he wakes up he wakes all the way up now. He told me to get the hell away from him and let him rest, so he'll live. I creep up every few hours to deliver his potions and then I get out as quickly as I can, before he can put some sort of curse on me. God, he's peevish. Where's Snape?"

"Said he was going to take a nap." She lit a cigarette and watched as Mickey bowled Dorothy over and cut circles around her. "He hasn't had much sleep for the last couple of nights."

"Neither have you."

"I'm running on nicotine and adrenalin." She tapped her cigarette on the ashtray. "Any news about Wayne?"

"Not yet. I've had friends checking out some of the usual little hives of depravity, but so far nothing. I might have to set my sights lower. I heard from Eric and he hasn't gotten anything useful out of the rumor mill."

"So, where do you figure to set up a base of operations for finding Wayne?"

"I was thinking about here. Does Wayne know anything at all about this place?"

She considered for a moment. "Not to my knowledge. If he did know, I've changed all of the passwords for the wards. It might work out well, but if we do use this place we're going to have to make some accommodations for Severus. He has enough going on without being sucked into this mess."

"Meaning?" Reuben arched and eyebrow as he poured himself a drink.

"Meaning that I don't care what goes on here as far as hunting Wayne goes from Monday morning when we leave until Friday when we get here, around four. But from Friday at four until Monday morning this cannot be a madhouse." She yawned and stretched. "I was thinking along the lines of setting aside a part of the house for Wayne hunting use and a part for Sev and I to have a little privacy. What do you think?"

Reuben leaned back in his chair. "I'm thinking that we'll need the lab at times. But the rest of the time what we need is basically a room where we can keep everything and pop in from time to time to talk things over. Do you guys use the old lab?"

"Haven't yet. It's wired for electricity already, all I have to do is turn it on at the main box. I can set you up a computer and I can rearrange a couple of walls and make passages into the third floor guest rooms. There is a full kitchen up on the third floor already too, not that it matters to you, Ruby. It wouldn't take much work at all. Do you need the second floor lab?"

"I would like to have access occasionally. I'm not keen on doing some sorts of work in the magical Amish fashion. What if we used the third floor and attic for Wayne business and made the second floor lab common territory?"

"Sounds like it might work out. There's plenty of room in the new lab for all of us and Snape's likely to be more interested in the horses and the library than the lab. By the way, he wants to get together with you about some of your potions. I let him borrow one of your notebooks. Like me, he can't figure out what you're doing on some of the stuff."

"I don't know why not. It's all in there except for the parts I left out." Reuben grinned. "He's welcome to use those notebooks as long as I get them back, and yeah, I'll show him what I left out of anything he wants to know about. Tell him to send a crow or an owl or whatever the magical Amish are using to the third floor when he's ready."

"Will do. He's not as Amish as the rest of the bunch here, either. Hey, when he's here next, can you show him how to string? He should know that and I'm not a good teacher. Oh, and he's only done it a few times so remember to make him take the potion. I don't want our local string to smell like vomit."

Reuben grinned. "I'll remember, Miss Persnickety, if for nothing else but the sake of my own shoes. I have to come through it too, you know. I need to show him the anti avada kedavra spell too. You'd just confuse him with all of that pureblooded round about garbage." She shot Reuben a scow and he smirked. "Snape is not one of you frail little pureblooded things. He can do it the easy way."

"I don't care how you show him as long as he is safe with it. Don't get him killed."

"I won't. Trust me."

"I've heard that one before. Just don't get him killed. Make sure he's good on the pea soup curse before you try him on avada kedavra."

"Deb, you don't have to be so overprotective, but OK. How are we stocked for feeder rats for the basilisk children?"

"Hundreds of them. I need to freeze some off for the them anyway."

"Cool. We'll practice and you package." Reuben glanced out at the basilisks. "Those guys are going to love this."

* * *

><p>"Dad! Dad! Come see this!"<p>

Eric ran to his oldest son's bedroom. "What's wrong?"

"Look!" The boy pointed to a small rubber ball on the floor and began pulling his finger toward him. The ball rocked for a moment then slowly began to roll toward his feet. "Does that mean that I'm not going to be a squib? Is that what the powers are like?"

"Let's try it again with something else. Eric glanced around the room, searching for an object that wouldn't roll, something that couldn't possibly move so easily. He spotted a pack of cards on his son's desk. "Try the cards, Art, try that deck of cards."

The boy concentrated and began his beckoning movements toward the cards. For nearly a minute, nothing happened. Then one by one, the cards began to slide off the top of the deck and fall onto the floor. Jerkily they made their way toward him and formed into a heap at his feet. The boy looked up, his eyes full of hope. "I did that, didn't I?"

"Yes!" Eric grabbed the boy and held him tightly, until the boy cried out and squirmed in protest. "Dad, you're choking me!" Eric released his son and stood back. "You're crying, Dad."

"I'm happy, that's all. I don't know what made you take so long to find it, but you have the power. You aren't a squib, kid! Let's go tell your mother!"

* * *

><p>Deborah returned from the house, smiling broadly. Snape looked up from a stack of papers. "Good news, I hope."<p>

"The best," she said. "While I was at the house, a crow came. Eric's oldest boy finally showed signs of magic. It wasn't much-he moved a ball and a deck of cards then some keys, but he did it himself. He's not a squib after all."

"Your family was worried."

"Yes. He's almost twelve. We had been ready to pull him out of school and send him to a nil school, but now we won't have to. If they don't show ability by thirteen they have to be taken out, but now he won't have to go. I don't know why it took so long, but he's doing it now. Eric is going to take some accrued vacation time to try to catch him up some with the other kids. He's way behind some of his classmates, but he's going to be alright once he gets in some practice."

Snape could not recall any witches or wizards of his acquaintance who did not manifest their powers by the age of seven or eight. True, some muggleborns didn't recognize them as such, but the abilities were plain to anyone familiar with magic. "Don't your people realize that they're breeding magic out of their children with their obsession over blood purity and insignificant physical qualities?"

"I think to some extent that they do, but they're set in their ways. It's like the people here and their reluctance to have anything to do with new technologies that muggles have developed, take electricity for instance. I swear that some of them would go back to leaves and grass if they realized that muggles invented toilet paper. Me, I'm all for whatever works better, old or new, the same as Eric and Ruby, but we're in the minority in our world too. It's practically heresy to question the idea of blood purity. We don't go to war over it, but it's still considered unacceptable to interbreed. Take Victor. Most of the fine young pureblood women wouldn't give him a second glance. Nice guy, talented as all hell. They would never come out and say it but he's sort of a pariah in the social circles. He's one fourth nil. That makes him kind of a second class wizard, a mutt. Reuben's in the same boat. He was a pureblood, but he chose to become a vampire. That made him anathema, the same as it did Ian."

"Why did they do it?" Snape was instantly curious.

"Ian did it because he was dying and it was the only way he could survive," she said. "He had tuberculosis, and at that time it was incurable. Ruby," she thought a minute, "I think that Ruby did it because he liked the idea of living nearly forever." She smiled crookedly. "A vampire female figured into that decision, but you'll have to ask Ruby about that one. That's really his story to tell."

"Vampires never die?"

"They all get killed eventually, it seems. I know of a couple who have hit the thousand year mark, but most of them never do. At some point they all start taking too many chances and end up dead. I don't think that humans were ever meant to live forever. It's my opinion only, but I believe that somehow we can't face seeing our ways of life change and lose friends and people we love indefinitely and still want to live."

She paused a moment, considering what she would say-it was difficult to put to words. "Ian and I discussed whether or not I would change, it's something that you can't help but think about when you're getting older and your husband never will. I still don't know how I would feel when I started aging past where he was. And since he died, it didn't end up mattering. But I still don't know what I would have done if he had lived. Their way of life has it's drawbacks, but on the other hand, I can imagine being an old woman married to a man who was physically far younger than me and feeling ancient and ugly. Not a good scenario. I don't know if I would have been strong enough to let go of him when it came to that. Until you're faced with the situation, how can you know what you're willing to give up for someone you love? Ian was willing to give up his life for me. I like to think that I would have done the same for him but when I think about it, I don't know if I could have done it." She sighed. "I've cultivated an appearance of bravery all my life, but I also know that in many ways I'm as cowardly as the worst."

"I try to tell myself that I gave up command of Ian's people because I knew that they should be governed by a vampire, but the truth of it is that I chickened out. I ran from command. I didn't want to be the one who gave orders that got people killed. I didn't want to be the one who led people into battle. I wanted to be the one who did the things I had been doing-working on weapons, helping Reuben out with the medical team, anything except being out in front where it really counted and out where people could see the cowardly side of me revealed, out where I had to face that I don't have what it takes to be the fearless leader. When all was said and done, I was afraid. But enough of the glory that is me. "How was your day?"

"Gryffindores and Slitherins sniping at each other, Hufflepuffs looking oblivious or anxious, Ravenclaws acting as if they're annoyed by such petty bickering. Mean old professor saddled with a load of dismal potions essays to dredge through and grade. Business as usual."

She laughed. "Want some help digging through that mess of desperate bullshit?"

"Of course." He handed her part of the stack. "So far they have been wholly disappointing. Don't expect brilliance, unless we find ourselves witnesses to a testable miracle, it's not to be found in those."


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27.

He sat in his office, making out supply requisitions. He had no scheduled classes in the afternoon on Fridays, but there were a couple of parent-professor meetings scheduled with the fathers of two of his more disappointing students. A tapping sound drew his attention. A large black crow perched at the window, staring at him.

Remembering a past incident that had led to unpleasantness and an embarrassing chocolate frog card, Snape immediately opened the window with his wand. The crow flitted to his desk.

"Personal message from Reuben Grey to Severus Snape."

Why would he be sending a crow to me and not to Deb, he wondered. "Raucous Crow, speak your message."

"Personal message from Reuben Grey to Severus Snape. Hey, it's Ruby. Sorry about the other night, we didn't mean to barge in on you like that but shit happens. So, Deb said that you borrowed one of my notebooks and that's fine-borrow any of them or all of them. Don't go into the boxes, though. Some of them have some rank defensive curses on them; I'll show you what I mean when you're out next. I'm going to be at the house this evening. Deb and I have to kill off rats to feed the basilisks, mine is out there now as well because I've been training the pair of them together. It would be a good chance to show you how we counter the avada kedavra curse, or at least how I counter it. You don't want to learn how Deb does it because she uses the nutty way to do it. Those purebloods aren't strong enough to do it right. The right way is easy. Same with stringing if you want to know how to do that. I'll show you how to fix any of the potions in my notebooks that you're interested in, Deb said there would be a couple. I leave a few bits out here and there so no one can use them unless it's someone I want to have them. I don't know how the owl thing works because all we use are these damned stinking crows, but if you want to send me an owl that's fine or tell the damn crow 'message reply' before it leaves then do the personal message from Severus Snape to Reuben Grey' bit. If you're busy, tell the damned crow 'wait for a message' and it will stay until you have time. Let me know roughly when you'll be there if you're coming so I can be sure to be there. Oh, if you've got any around and you're thinking of it, I'd like to try out that truth potion, vera-something Deb was telling me about but couldn't remember the name of it. That woman never pays attention when it's something important, only when it's something she's interested in. Or if you could bring me the formula, I'd like to take a stab at making it. Catch you later!"

The crow glared at Snape then stared pointedly at the window. Snape commanded the crow to wait. After thinking out what he was going to say, he ordered the crow to take a reply.

"Personal message from Severus Snape to Reuben Grey. The potion is veritaserum. I'll bring some. I plan to be out there around six this evening." Snape dismissed the crow, closed the window, and resumed his work.

The crow delivered the reply. "Does he think the crow gets paid by the word?" Reuben asked.

"That's the way he is." Deborah picked up a book she had been reading off and on for a couple of days. "It looks as if we have several hours till he gets here, and Vic is threatening to kill us if we hover over him any more." She flipped through some pages until she found what had caught her attention. "Wanna try out this patronus thing? It sounds like it could be interesting."

Reuben took the book from her hands. "Oooh, look at this picture! If we figure out how to do the patronus charm, we can go see…."

* * *

><p>The wonderful thing about meetings with parents is that prior to the event the parents often accept that their little heir is not as brilliant as they once hoped then decide that they would prefer not have me hand them irrefutable proofs. Snape made a last minute check of his desk, picked up the few items he was taking with him, and headed out of the castle.<p>

It was roughly noon. Even with multiple apparitions, he could be at the house before one. He stood at the top of the hill, concentrated for a moment, then with a soft popping sound he was off on the first stage of his journey.

* * *

><p>Snape arrived at the edge of the woods above the lawn. Smoke was rising from somewhere in the backyard and he could smell meat cooking. Deborah had mentioned making a dish called 'pulled pork' earlier in the week and he guessed that it might be what he was noticing.<p>

He also noticed the shouts. He slipped behind the trees and began moving quietly toward the voices. Once he reached the edge of the pasture, he could see Reuben and Deborah sitting on the ground, consulting a book and arguing in an animated fashion.

"It says it has to be a specific memory. It can't just be feeling happy."

"I'm trying to think of one perfect memory and I can't."

"You're over two hundred years old and you can't think of a time you were completely happy? What is up with that?"

"I don't ascribe to absolutes being an attribute of the human condition."

"If I kick you in the shins you are absolutely going to get pissed off."

"But I won't be absolutely pissed off. There are things that would make me more pissed off."

"Are you absolutely sure of that?"

"Stop it, Deb, this isn't getting us any closer to making patronuses or patroni or whatever the hell the plural is." Reuben stood, drew his wand, pointed it, and shouted "Expecto Patronum." A non-descript strand appeared for an instant.

"That looked like a seatworm," Deborah observed as she rose to her feet.

"Yeah, well yours have all looked like a nothing. I hope mine works out to be a polecat because if it does I'm going to let you have it with both barrels. Your turn to try. Knock yourself out."

Deborah squared her shoulders and shouted the incantation while casting her wand. A speck of light appeared and flitted for a second before it disappeared. "Deb, that's so cool!" Reuben gushed. "Your patronus is a peckergnat!" He barely dodged her well-aimed kick.

Ducking behind a large oak, Snape clasped both hands over his mouth and struggled to contain his laughter. The two wizards on the field below him continued to bicker and attempt to cast the charm, each occasionally producing a tiny and fleeting amorphous glow which the other quickly labeled as some unflattering life form. Their patronuses should be magpies, he thought.

"We could ask Snape how to do this when he gets here," Reuben mentioned.

"Yeah, we could. But he already thinks that we're a couple of jackasses." Snape almost suffocated in the process of stifling his mirth over that comment.

"Deb, we _are_ jackasses," Reuben said. "But we're likable jackasses. I'm going to try another memory. Maybe that's where we're screwing up. Be quiet a minute and let me concentrate." Reuben closed his eyes for several seconds and then looked forward and cast his wand. "Expecto Patronus!" No results at all. "So much for the first time I ever got laid." Deborah snickered and Reuben displayed a mocking appearance of being deeply offended.

"It's Patronum, not patronus." Deborah tried next. She managed a baseball sized ball of glowing light for a few seconds. "The time Wayne threw a knife at me and I zapped him with the foede curse." Reuben fell to the ground laughing. And I believed I had an interesting childhood, Snape thought. He mentally filed away the foede curse for future inquiry. Deborah helped pull Reuben off of the ground. "Your turn, jackass."

"Thanks, jackass. Let me try something else."

A silvery form appeared, the form of a young colt. It wheeled and kicked it's heels for a few seconds then dissipated. "It worked!" Reuben jumped up and down, very much like the image he had created. "That's what I needed, a better memory!" Snape stopped choking back laughter and raised his eyebrows in surprise. Not bad at all for a beginner. There was evidently more to Reuben than one would think from the childish way he usually acted.

"What memory did you use?" Deborah asked softly with a quizzical expression on her face.

"Remember the night that you and Ian and Gina and I went to the Stones concert?" She nodded with a smile on her face. "Afterward, when we drank a case of beer and went skinny dipping out at the frog hole. I remembered how we were cutting up and acting stupid and jerking around and jumping into the creek and how the crawdad grabbed Gina's toe and she started screaming bloody murder and the three of us all caught crawdads and chased her around. That's what I used." She nodded. It had been a goofy carefree time.

"I'm going to try using that one too." She gathered her thoughts for a moment, grinned, then pointed her wand. "Expecto Patronum!" Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. An animal form appeared, small and bushy tailed with dark rings around it's eyes and down the length of it's tail. It sat back on it's haunches, waving it's paws in the air comically, then dissolved into a brief glow. "It worked!" The two of them did a capering dance of victory in the field, stepping in several piles of horse dung in the process.

"I didn't see anything in the book about a raccoon patronus. I wonder what's up with that?"

Reuben threw an arm around her shoulder. "Raccoons are common enough back were we come from. Maybe that's why you got such an oddball one.

Suddenly the shimmering form of a doe bounded out of the trees and stopped directly in front of them. "Where in the hell did that come from?" Reuben asked her. She shrugged her shoulders. Snape strolled nonchalantly from the forest, avoiding the horse manure the pair had so recently cavorted in.

"Where did you come from?" Reuben asked.

"The stork brought me. Or so my mother said. I suspect that she may have been untruthful on that point." Snape smirked.

"Jerk!" Reuben observed.

"But a likable jerk." He picked the book up off of the ground and recognized it as a Hogwarts library title. He handed it to Deborah. "What inspired the two of you to want to learn to how to cast a Patronus charm?"

"We want to go and look at dementors," Reuben informed him brightly.

"Then you truly are jackasses."

The jerk walked toward the house and after a moment the two jackasses exchanged a glance, rolled their eyes, then followed.


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Reuben and Snape stood at the edge of the pasture. The horses had been stabled earlier for safety. A large tank of rats sat before them, and a wire cage had been placed nearby. A trio of bushel baskets a few feet away awaited their intended victims.

"OK," Reuben announced, "time to get the show on the road." He reached into the tank and withdrew a squirming rat by the tail then carried it over and tossed it in the cage. Standing back a few feet, he directed his wand at the rat, speaking the incantation "_Lorica Maxima_." The rat appeared to startle for a few seconds, then resumed exploring the cage. "That's one rat we won't be able to curse for a few hours." Reuben stood back a few feet further from the rat. "OK, Severus, try to kill that rat."

Snape backed off about fifteen feet. He pulled out his wand. "_Avada Kedavra_!" Green bolts of energy struck the rat, and an emerald nimbus of light enveloped it. The rat shrieked and bounced frantically against the wire walls of it's prison. Green wormy bits of light appeared to crawl over the rat. The rat continued to seek an escape from it's wire bounds. Snape watched for a moment as it squeaked and gnawed at the wire mesh. Finally, the rat calmed and began seeking an exit by nosing at the corners. He turned to Reuben. "_Lorica Maximus_?"

"Close. _Lorica Maxima_. Largest or strongest shield in Latin. It's one of the few contemporary American charms named in Latin. In America, naming a charm or curse in Latin is considered to be an affectation of sorts. But it has a nice ring to it." Reuben grinned. "When you speak the incantation, you have to picture a kind of a force shield of the strongest sort of protection gathered around the rat. Whatever works for you personally is fine. I imagine the rat to be in a tiny Sherman tank, rolling along merrily. But pick whatever image you feel conveys a sense of supreme safety. This charm has to be done with the conviction that the rat will be protected. It works solely from two things-the strength of your belief that the rat or whatever will be protected and from the sheer strength of your magic. The latter is why it rarely works for purebloods." Reuben pulled the rat out and held it's head against a nearby stump. With a quick upward jerk of it's tail, he broke the rat's neck then tossed it into one of the baskets. "Doesn't work against non-magical killing methods, I'm afraid. But the basilisks and snakes don't care how the rat got killed." Reuben selected another rat from the tank, threw it into the cage. "Your turn."

Snape watched the rat move around the cage for a minute. He decided to try Reuben's Sherman tank imagery, even though it seemed slightly foolish. "_Lorica Maxima_," he incanted, with a brisk snap of his wand. He waited for the testing.

Reuben cast the curse. The rat jumped and screeched. A green nimbus formed briefly, then the rat crumpled, gave a few agonal kicks, and died. "Not bad for your first shot at it." Reuben retrieved the rat, tossed it into the basket, then selected another to replace it. "Try again."

Snape performed the charm and Reuben cast the curse. The rat lived a little longer that time, but a few seconds later the greenish glow began to affect it and within half a minute it was dead. A few more attempts brought similar results.

"It takes a while to feel out what needs to be done to make it work. No worry, we have plenty of rats. You might want to consider some other imagery. Sherman tanks work for me because I saw them in action, in World War II, but they don't cut it for everyone." Reuben switched out the dead rat for a live one. "Whenever you're ready. Take your time, there's no reason to hurry."

Snape began to form a different picture in his mind, that of a locked room deep in the tunnels of Gringotts bank. That scenario was more meaningful to him than an armored vehicle he knew of only from photographs in history texts, it was one he recognized from his regular visits. He performed the charm, then stepped back and nodded at Reuben. Reuben cast the curse.

The rat jumped and squealed. It dashed madly about the cage, bouncing from it's wire confines. For nearly a minute, the nimbus held, then the rat slowly succumbed to the curse. Reuben smiled brightly. "Now you're getting somewhere!" Reuben replaced the dead rat with another live one. The next few tries brought slight improvement, then the results began to plateau. "You want to take a break from this?" Reuben asked. Snape shook his head.

He searched through his memories and found another, a haunting and terrible one he possessed, one he was loathe to use, one that was painful to think about. But it was a powerful memory, so after a brief hesitation he decided to try it. He nodded to Reuben, who stepped clear. Concentrating on the memory, Snape applied the charm.

Reuben moved close to him then aimed his wand and cursed the rat. The rat froze then shivered, then began to stand on it's hind legs. It's coat quivered, as if it were feeling something crawling on it's body. The foggy glow held. Poisonous green worm-like threads of energy began forming, appearing to crawl over the rodent's body. One strand fell to the ground, and the rat sniffed it cautiously, then nipped at it. Slowly, the green cloudiness dissipated, and the crawling energy bits dimmed then blinked out, one by one. Snape stood watching the rat, an unreadable expression on his face. The rat continued to nose into the corners of it's cage. Reuben slapped Snape on the back, breaking his concentration. "You got it right that time! Whatever image you used, that's the thing that's going to work for you!"

When he turned back to face Snape, Reuben was confused at seeing not the look of triumph he expected but one of shock and anguish. Dear god, he thought, what is that about? Taking his arm, Reuben led him over to a fallen tree and sat him down, becoming alarmed at the lack of resistance. Snape dropped his head into his hands silently. Moments passed. Damnit, Reuben silently swore. I'm not good at this. He stood nearby for a while, wondering what to do. Finally, he sat beside Snape and after a brief hesitation, put an arm around his shoulders. The jerking movements he felt told him that Snape was crying. He let him do so uninterrupted.

After some time, he heard a whispered "Sorry." Then a choking voice continued. "Someone…I cared about…died. they…sacrificial…protection…" The soft sobbing resumed. At length, anger replaced grief. Snape raised his head and stared off into the distance. "I can save a fucking rat, but I couldn't save her. It was all….unnecessary. A waste."

A wrenching pain tore through the vampire's chest. He had no clue to what Snape was speaking of, but he recognized the feeling. Long ago, he had felt much the same, the day Ian had given up his life for his wife.

Snape regained his composure eventually and sat upright, shaking his head as if to clear his thoughts. "I'm alright now." Reuben patted his shoulder a final time then fished in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. Impulsively, he offered Snape one and was surprised when it was accepted. Reuben lit them both up. Snape drew from the cigarette and exhaled slowly. Reuben grinned slyly.

"Don't tell Deb. She'll have my balls if she thinks I'm corrupting you." Snape let out a short mirthless laugh. "Seriously. She thinks that she's the only one who's allowed to corrupt you." That garnered a snort. "How long ago did it happen?"

"About ten years ago." Snape stared down at the ground.

"Then this wouldn't have helped. It was only discovered about six years ago. Oddly enough, by doing the same thing we're doing today. Killing rats."

"How?" Snape's curious nature was piqued.

Reuben chuckled. "A pair of enterprising young wizards partnered to start up a business selling frozen rats to people who keep snakes and monitor lizards. They wanted to trim their expenses, so instead of gassing the rats with carbon dioxide to kill them, they turned to the far cheaper method of _Avada Kedavra_." That got a laugh. "After they had killed a few thousand rats, they started thinking along the lines of 'this would be a good time to try out counters to curses and hexes and such.' So they experimented for several years on the rats they killed. Eventually through persistence and dumb luck they came up with _Lorica Maxima. _The rest, as they say, is history. Since these two ingenious businessmen happened to also be Knights of Merlin, naturally they had to brag about it to their fellow knights and show them how to use it. Now the counter to _Avada Kedavra _is the exclusive property of the Knights of Merlin. And, of course, one Severus Snape."

"I don't believe that I could qualify as a Knight of Merlin. I'm not descended from Merlin."

"Ah, that is where you're mistaken," Reuben chuckled. Snape turned to watch his face. Reuben waggled his eyebrows comically. "Every human being of contemporary British extraction is descended from Merlin-you, me, Deborah, the pimply guy who sold me these cigarettes, the sots in the alleys, the royal family-everyone." He flicked the ash from his cigarette. "Merlin lived over a thousand years ago. He was not inclined to celibacy, and things being as they were in those days, he begat children, bar sinister to be sure, although the purebloods never mention that tidbit. They begat, their begats begat, and so on and so forth. If a person more than six hundred years ago had children and those children reproduced and their lines continued and intermingled, they eventually became a common ancestor of all of us and therefore we're all his spawn if you go back far enough. That path has been traced a hundred times over and then some. That is one of our little pureblood deceptions, that we're so special because we descend from Merlin. Witch, wizard, squib, and muggle alike, we all derive from the august loins of Merlin. You couldn't sling a dead cat in a London subway without striking the descendents of Merlin." Reuben rolled his eyes then smirked.

At that, Snape truly laughed. Here, Reuben the clown was in his element. He continued to share a few of his favorite pureblood tales as the sun dipped lower on the horizon.

* * *

><p>A house elf retrieved the baskets of slain rats for packaging and freezing as the two wizards ambled toward the house, occasionally exchanging the last of two flasks Reuben had so thoughtfully chosen to bring along. "So Deborah won't smell the cigarettes on you. Purely to maintain domestic peace and harmony." Snape stumbled and Reuben caught him. "Careful, there, you nearly fell into fresh horse shit. No need to be so dedicated to the cause of maintaining domestic peace and harmony." Snape howled with laughter. "Damn, I've gotten you wasted! Deborah is going to have my balls!" The next time, Reuben was not nearly quick enough. Snape wavered, then fell. "Oh, shit!" Reuben cried. And indeed, that was the very substance which Snape had tumbled into. Reuben reached out a hand to help him up. Snape paused a moment, accepted the assistance, then slipped and toppled back. Reuben was thus similarly anointed with filth.<p>

Deborah stood on the porch and watched their staggering approach. "Severus! Reuben Grey! Where have you two been all of this time? And why are you both covered in horse shit?" Reuben and Snape looked at each other then glanced down at their clothing and burst out laughing. "Wait!" she commanded. She rushed into the house. She reappeared with her camera, and another few pictures were added to the growing collection.

"Something smells good," Snape observed. "I'm starving. Let's eat!"

"Let's wash up and change first, shall we?" Reuben pointedly jerked his head toward the upstairs bathrooms. "Severus?"

"Yes." They stomped into the house and up the steps, redolent of scotch and horse manure. A house elf followed with a pan and brush, sweeping up the bits that fell from them as they lurched and swayed.

Something happened out there besides killing rats and practicing counter curses, she mused. Both of them are blocking me out. Something that neither one of them wants me to know about. She sighed. I'm not sure what it was, but perhaps it's better that way. She watched as they clomped up the stairs and out of sight, then turned her attention toward directing Hoople to get the meal on the table.

* * *

><p>Snape plowed into the food. "This is excellent!" he stated, holding up a forkful of pulled pork for emphasis. He glanced over at Reuben. In addition to his travel mug, blessedly opaque to hide it's contents, Reuben had a plate. The vampire was eating.<p>

"Vampires don't eat human food!" Snape blurted.

"Thanks for the heads up, _Mister Vampire Expert_," Reuben drawled sarcastically. "Where were you two hundred years ago when I skipped out on Vampire 101?" He chuckled. "The bullshit that people believe they know about us. We don't teach counter curses to wizards or get yanked into piles of horse shit either."

"But…"

"I can eat regular food. I can't survive solely on human food. Now, it's true that most vampires won't touch it. But that is strictly cultural. I'd have to drink five pints or so of blood or so each day to meet my basic caloric requirements-it's got roughly five hundred calories to the pint. Unless I want to be sucking down the red stuff by the quart, which I don't," he waved his hand lazily at the mug, "I need to eat, the same as you must. Do close your mouth, Severus, or an insect may enter." Reuben's expression was one of pure amusement. "I generally find that a pint a day meets my personal requirements. And this is such a wonderful dinner conversation."

"Doesn't bother me." Deborah smirked.

"An in-depth discussion of the inquisitor's art wouldn't bother you at the table, my dear. You are, quite simply, abominable. She really is," he said, turning to Snape. "I've seen that woman eat cookies in a battlefield hospital with screams and groans for background music. Scary."

"So, I don't have a weak stomach. It's not like that's a cardinal sin." The three moved on to other topics, and Reuben, ever the entertainer, launched into a disparaging review of early Victorian standards of sanitation. After the meal was over, after they had moved to the fireside, their conversation drifted to other subjects, and the mirth continued long into the night.


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Snape painfully crawled out of bed and stood shaking. His head was pounding. It tasted as if a baby dragon had squatted on his face and crapped into his mouth. His stomach lurched. He stumbled into the bathroom and barely had time to bow before the porcelain altar before the full aftereffects of maintaining domestic peace and harmony gripped him. Reuben Grey's two flasks. It had seemed like such a perfectly reasonable idea at the time. He rinsed his mouth out at the sink and splashed cold water on his face. A glance at the mirror forced him to avert his eyes, eyes that were nearly as red as…what a disgusting image. He walked back into the bedroom. Deborah lay still, oblivious to his suffering, snoring softly.

He pulled on a bathrobe, a minor task which required considerable effort to accomplish. Afterward, he padded barefoot down the cold hall and on toward the potions lab. I can figure out some sort of potion to counteract this, he thought, steadying himself by running a hand along the wall as he walked. In the lab, he found Reuben lalready seated at one of the stations. Some odd sort of clear potion was boiling and spitting in a pyrex beaker without any visible form of heat having been applied. Reuben absently chanted an unfamiliar incantation in a sing-song fashion, "_Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is._"

"What's that?"

"That is the day after potion. I'll fix you one. You look as if you could use some yourself." Reuben reached into a drawer and pulled a beaker from under the station, filled it with water, and after digging in his pocket he retrieved then tore open a small square paper packet. A flat white tablet plopped into the water and it began to boil of it's own accord. Snape repeated the incantation, which brought a sardonic smile to Reuben's face.

"What is the name of this potion?"

"Alka Seltzer. It tastes like the devil's own piss, but it works wonders on that which so cruelly afflicts us." Reuben took a swig of the day-after-Alka-Seltzer potion, grimaced, then drank the remainder quickly.

The beaker in front of him stopped boiling. Snape took a tiny cautious sip. "This tastes like a deadly poison. Are you sure it will work?"

"It works. Give it fifteen minutes or so to do the job. Trust me."

Snape gave Reuben a dark glare but repeated the incantation, then drank the miserable tasting liquid. After a few minutes, Snape's queasy stomach settled and the pounding headache subsided. He turned back toward Reuben. "How do you make this?"

Reuben scratched his head then shook it. "You don't make it. It's a muggle concoction. You buy it at any of their drugstores. I have a case of it in the back if you should ever need it again. By the way, you don't need an incantation for it to work. That was the advertising jingle."

Despite being irked at thinking that Reuben had purposefully tricked him into singing the television commercial, Snape appeared to be impressed. "I never suspected that muggles would produce anything this useful. If they would only adjust the flavoring…"

"I think that they know if you need it the flavor isn't going to be a deal breaker." Reuben yawned. "I'm going back to bed. Later on today, I'll show you how to apply the _Lorica Maxima _counter curse to yourself. Right now, I'm not in any condition to do it."

"Nor am I." Snape pushed his limp sweaty hair back from his face. "When we do that, let's do it somewhere else, perhaps in the backyard. I would prefer to not fall into horse shit nor be compelled to maintain domestic peace and harmony again."

"No argument here." The two rose stiffly and shuffled off to their respective rooms. Snape tossed his bathrobe onto the floor then fell into bed. Aside from the lingering slight sensation that the room was spinning around him, the potion had healed him effectively. Deborah continued to snore softly, undisturbed by his flopping movements. He rolled his body into a ball and pulled the covers over his head to shield his eyes from the hideously bright sunlight streaming through the windows. Before long he drifted off into curiously vivid dreams of _Avada Kedavra_ and dead rats, and of flasks of scotch and cigarettes.

* * *

><p>Snape and Reuben carried a cage of rats into the yard. "No basket this time?" Snape asked.<p>

"We don't need it. We have two basilisks." Mickey and Dorothy waited eagerly, their eyes trained upon the rats.

Reuben lifted a rat from the cage and plopped it onto the lawn. It sniffed around and stood on it's hind legs. Snape applied the charm. "Should we hold them back?" he asked, jerking his head toward the basilisks?

"No need. They can't be killed with _Avada Kedavra_. All it does is sting them a little and they need to learn not to kill unless they're told to, anyway." At a gesture from Reuben, Snape pulled out his wand and charmed the rat. The charm held when Reuben worked the curse. "Dorothy-kill!" Reuben pointed at the rat. The basilisk gleefully leaped forward and grabbed the rat by the head then shook it, similar to the manner in which Snape had seen terriers kill rats. Mickey began to inch toward the feeding female, but stopped at Reuben's sharp command to stay. Dorothy sniffed the dead rat, located the head, then lifted the rat, swallowing it in three gulps. Mickey chittered angrily. "Sucks to be you," Reuben commented dryly. "Wait for your turn."

The rest of the rats met with identical fates, the small serpents alternately dispatching them once they survived the curse. When all of the rats were dead and eaten, Mickey slithered to Snape, doing a twisting dance before him with an ingratiating expression on his face. "Greedy little bastard," Reuben commented. "You've had enough! Leave!" Reuben pointed to a tree and the basilisks slinked away reluctantly then coiled beneath in the shade. He turned to Snape. "Now, I'll show you how you work the charm on yourself."

Reuben pocketed his wand into his sleeve. He concentrated for a few seconds, placed his hand on his chest, then spoke the incantation. Snape thought he saw a brief disturbance in the air around the vampire; as if for a split second a wave of heat had disturbed the air for an inch or so around him. "OK, Snape," he spoke, moving a few feet away and out of the line of fire of the house. "Try cursing me."

Snape hesitated. Reuben grinned. "Go on, it's fine-really. I don't have a death wish." Snape pulled out his wand. "_Avada Kedavra_!"

A green flash crackled and struck the vampire. The nimbus formed and held. But then, Reuben's expressions contorted and he clawed dramatically at his chest. Frank horror appeared on Snape's face. "Gotcha!" the vampire laughed. Snape's coloring went from pale to flushed and his expression transformed to one of murderous rage, which made Reuben laugh even more loudly. "Where's Deborah with her damned camera when you need her?" he snickered. The green crawling worms of light appeared then blinked out.

"That was not the least bit amusing."

"I, for one, found it highly entertaining."

"I don't see that it's anything to joke about. I had no desire to kill you…then."

Reuben laughed again. "You'll have to wait a while for that. Around six hours. Come on, Snape, grow a sense of humor, and if you can't do that, at least fake one. Go ahead, try to place the charm on yourself."

Snape repeated the actions he had seen Reuben perform a moment earlier. "Think you have it?" Reuben asked.

Snape hesitated again. He had felt _something _when he applied the charm, an instant of strange vibration. "I don't know. How can you tell?"

"If it's properly applied, you will feel as if you're shivering, but only for a very short while. I'm not going to hit you with _Avada Kedavra _at any rate. I'm going to use another curse; it's a nasty one but it can't kill you. It blocks the same way and if you've worked the charm right it won't affect you and it will tell us if it would have held for _Avada Kedavra_. And if you're not comfortable trying it out yet we have plenty of rats and we can keep on practicing until you feel ready."

Snape gave a small soft sigh. "I'm ready. Give it a shot."

"Sure?"

Snape nodded, feeling apprehensive but willing himself to test the charm. Reuben stood back and pulled his wand. Snape winced slightly. Reuben shouted "_Foede!_" as he snapped his wand.

Blue-green energy snaked onto Snape. He felt a sensation of heat for a few seconds. A bluish nimbus formed and held, then wormlike strands of the same color began forming-it felt as if they were crawling over his body. Then the glowing bits winked out. He exhaled deeply, suddenly realizing that he had been holding his breath.

"Worked perfectly. You're protected against that particular killing curse for the next several hours."

"What was that curse you used to test me?"

Reuben snickered. "Oh, that curse. That's a kid's curse. The bane of schoolyards across wizarding America."

"Yes, but what does it do?"

"It makes you soil yourself in an unnaturally violent manner. Now, aren't you glad that you managed to do the charm correctly?" The murderous look reappeared on Snape's face. "What, would you rather have chanced being killed?

"Yes!" And at that, Reuben fell to the ground laughing. Snape turned abruptly and stormed into the house.

Deborah was putting a meal on the table when he stormed in and announced "Reuben is an imbecile and a fool!"

"Now tell me something I didn't know." She set a platter of sausages and a bowl of scrambled eggs down. Snape stood glowering. "What?"

"Do you know that your friend out there cast the _Foede_ curse on me?"

"He did? Then you're a quick study. It usually takes several days to learn how to make that charm hold." She carried bread to the table and went back for butter.

"Do you know what that curse could have done?"

"Of course I do. It's one of the first curses he taught me."

"But…he cast it at _me_!"

"That's how you learn if you can block _Avada Kedavra_. Now you know that you can do it and you've picked up a useful new curse to boot."

Reuben entered the room. "Ooh, eggs and sausage!" He slid into a chair and began piling his plate. He looked up at Snape. "Well, are you going to stand there and watch us eat or are you going to join us?"

In the end, the eggs and sausages did look appetizing, and Snape was quite hungry. All the same, he continued to glare at his dining companions and they politely repressed the urge to laugh at him.

* * *

><p>He couldn't bear another moment of the combined antics of Reuben and Deborah. Yes, he did enjoy their company, and yes, he did possess a sense of humor, despite their nearly constant claims to the contrary. But when they were together they inevitably crossed the line that separates humor from buffoonery. He needed a break to clear his head and relax.<p>

The need led him to his favorite place of solace, the barn. Here he could be with animals, and although he had never owned a pet and had never received much exposure to domestic animals aside from the utilitarian owls he used for delivering messages, he felt at ease with them. The Appaloosa mare was still penned in the far pasture with Papoose. Both Deborah and Reuben had suggested that he use Oracle, a grade mare. He took the black hat from a peg, placed it on his head, and left the tack room and walked into the stall area.

Oracle proved to be an agreeable but sleepy chestnut mare. She responded slightly to his scratching and rubbing, but struck him as indifferent. He wandered down the row of stalls, observing the rest of the horses.

A tall sleek black horse caught his eye. He glanced up at the nameplate above it's stall. Destiny. A quick once over told him that the horse was a mare. He stood in front of the gate to her stall. She snorted at him, then stretched out her neck toward him, her nostrils flared. He observed her more closely. Long slim neck, dished face, slick coat. Her body was lean but powerful. He went to a barrel of withered apples and selected a few. As he turned back he saw her ears prick forward.

Snape held an apple out. She snorted then whickered and stepped closer. He waited patiently. A small step at a time, she approached. At last, he felt the velvet of her lips and she carefully plucked the apple from his palm. One by one she accepted his gifts. When there were no more, she reached her long neck over the barrier and sniffed him, then rubbed her face on his chest.

He opened the gate and stepped into the stall, moving slowly so not to alarm her. His hands dropped to his sides. The mare stepped back. Snape waited. Finally she nickered, stepped forward, and dropped her head to rest against his chest.

He began stroking the mare, slowly and gently, enchanted by the silky smoothness under his hand. She rubbed against him. He scratched her back, smiling as she leaned against him. Keeping his hands moving on her body he stepped behind her then around to the other side. She bobbed her head but made no move to get away. He went to her head, took her halter, then opened the gate and led her to the ties, where the tack was stored.

Reuben and Deborah were sitting on the porch, drinking iced tea and chatting. "Hey, Deb, don't have a fit, but look up on the ridge." She glanced upward, then stood and walked to the railing. Shading her eyes with her hand, she watched as the black mare cantered across the crest of the hill.

The mare moved effortlessly under him. She responded to the lightest shift of his weight and touch of the reins. His expression relaxed into one that would have shocked his students, one of peace and contentment. The gentle rocking motion was soothing, delightful. He headed the mare down the path to the sandy beach at a jog.

He pulled the mare up at the water's edge. Silently he watched the play of light on the waves. The mare beneath him pawed the sand with her delicate looking hoof . With a lift of the reins she broke into a trot. Another lift of the reins brought her to a canter. Then he leaned forward and asked for speed. The mare broke into a full gallop and they raced along the surf.

The sounds of people shouting broke his reverie. He could see a beach ahead, a muggle beach. He reined the mare in, turned her, and headed back at a leisurely canter. Twenty minutes later, they encountered another muggle beach. He turned back. When he came to the path he headed into the trees, pulling the mare down into a smooth walk. They followed the trails for miles, and Snape's thoughts drifted. A couple of hours later, he pulled up to the porch, where Reuben and Deborah were playing two handed euchre, a game which they both cheated at shamelessly, as they did with every game.

"Have a good ride?" Reuben was the first to acknowledge his presence. Snape nodded.

"She's not a bad mare. Good looking animal." Deborah dealt a hand, some from the top of the deck, some not. "You can't fault her conformation."

"Not bad at all. All of the spirit you want but not crazy." Reuben turned back to the table then picked up his cards and arranged them.

"Plenty of speed when you ask her for it." Deborah arranged her hand with a foxy smile. "Smooth gaits too."

Snape nodded again, then turned the horse to the barn. He felt a slight pang of disappointment as he brushed down the mare then led her to her stall. The sounds of Deborah's gloats of victory and Reuben's protests of cheating rang from the house. Why was no one willing to bitch at him when he was spoiling for a good argument?


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Snape returned to the house after seeing to the black mare. At least the sound of recreational bickering had vanished, a development that he found hopeful. The kitchen was empty, save for Hoople squatted on the countertop, peeling a bucket of potatoes. "What's for dinner?"

The little house elf, clad in an outlandish tattered leopard print pillowcase, looked up. "Shepherd's pie. Hoople makes for tonight." Snape smiled faintly-it was a favorite of his. Two more elves appeared, carrying a basket of carrots. Another jumped onto the counter and began mixing some sort of dough. He could hear tins clattering in the pantry. How many of the little monsters does she have skulking around here? There seemed to be more of them each time he came to the house.

"Where is Deborah?"

"Deborah Jenkins is in the new laboratory." The elf gave the word 'new' an emphasis which conveyed a slight sense of disdain. Glancing back, he noted that Hoople was having difficulty using the peeler. Hoople grinned apologetically. "Deborah Jenkins says that Hoople must use this," he held the peeler up, "because she doesn't want to eat house elf in the Shepherd's pie."

Snape snorted. "Neither do I." He turned and climbed the stairs.

When he entered the lab he found Reuben, Deborah, and a still slightly singed Victor Black huddled over a disassembled computer. Victor was fitting a dull metallic sheet of some sort of thin plastic material over the inside of the case. Deborah was cutting another one out from a template. Reuben appeared to have glued yet another sheet to his hands and was trying to pull it off, becoming even more stuck in the process.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to put the shielding on this computer, despite these two jerking around," Victor replied, waving a hand at Deborah and Reuben. "So it will operate in the presence of magic." He scowed at Reuben. "Instead of gluing yourself to the shielding, why don't you wrap the cord with the insulator tape?" Reuben pulled the scraps of the ruined sheet from his hands and began winding tape around a cord. Snape had wondered how they managed to make electricity operate around magic.

"Yeah, that's how it's done," Victor said as he smoothed down a corner. _Great, another one in the plague of empaths._ "No one know exactly how magic works, but it's a sort of energy that plays merry hell with electricity, disrupts it somehow. Every inch of wiring in this house and every piece of equipment has to be shielded to work properly. And even then if some idiot tries to, say, cast some sort of a spell at a machine," and he looked pointedly at Reuben, "it totally shorts it out." An expression of exaggerated innocence appeared on Reuben's face. "Like when someone tried to charm the air conditioning into operating in absolute silence one time."

"That was only one time and it almost…"

"Or the time someone wanted to win big at solitaire and tried to magically change the odds to their favor…"

"That was purely an experiment." Deborah continued cutting out the shielding.

"Worse than two year olds." Victor taped up the seams on the shielding. Then he reassembled the casing. "There you go, Windows 3.0. See how much more havoc you can wreak." He plugged the computer in and hooked up a monitor. Have fun until you break it. Then call Eric to fix it."

Reuben beamed. "When do we get internet in here?"

"After the first of the year." Victor scowled. "God help us all."

* * *

><p>On the afternoon of the annual Halloween party, Snape walked toward the headmaster's office. Along the way he went over several possible reasons he could have been summoned. Most likely, it was going to be a discussion of a recent note he had sent on to Dumbledore, some personal observations regarding the current Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Quirrell. Or, it could be the usual attempt to distract him from his brooding on the events of a Halloween years ago, events that Dumbledore should know by know wouldn't be smoothed off by a pep talk. Or maybe one of the little numbskull's parents were distraught by their darling's fear of the scary Potions professor.<p>

As things turned out, it was another issue altogether.

"Severus, please, sit." Dumbledore moved to pour him some tea, and with a gesture Snape declined. "Has Deborah spoken with you?"

"About what?"

"Oh, then, she hasn't. I reluctantly accepted her resignation from the adjunct professor position today." Snape's eyebrows flew up, she hadn't said a word about that. He reached for the tea, this wasn't going to be the short conversation he hoped for.

"I received these from the Ministry of Magic today, along with a strong suggestion that she be sacked for writing what they took to be inappropriate children's reading materials. Naturally, I don't send people off because the Ministry busybodies are displeased with them. But when we met earlier and spoke, she felt that the best thing would be for her to leave her staff position." Dumbledore handed Snape a pair of somewhat worn thin books.

He glanced down at them. _My Little Golden Book of Curses. My Little Treasury of Hexes. _Both authored by R. Grey and D. Jenkins. He thumbed through them. Hardly any of the curses or hexes were children's curses. Many came with counter spells. He looked up at Albus for comment.

"Look at the publishing company." Snape checked the jacket flap. "Knights of Merlin Publishing House, 1988. Deborah and a friend wrote those for their knights as a training tool and they've been wildly popular among them. They weren't ever meant to be released to the children or to the general wizarding public, they were put into that form to make them humorous and more assessable. I left Hogwarts today and went to a squib's house and called up the Knights and they were amazed that I had obtained copies of these. They were quite curious as to how they came into the hands of our ministry. I told them what I had been told, that they were sent anonymously and that puzzled them. They were also quite astounded that our ministry couldn't see them for what they were-adult training materials designed for easier reading."

Snape turned his attention back to the books. A chapter on thwarting the _Cruciatus_ curse and how to cast said curse. _Avada Kedavra_. "_Avada Kedavra _is a killing curse, and one that should only be cast for training purposes, in situations of utmost peril, or if the basilisks are hungry." He grinned slightly at that.

"I couldn't make out what they meant about hungry basilisks. Does that mean anything to you, Severus?"

"Yes." He decided not to elaborate, to leave Dumbledore wondering about that part.

"They can counter _Avada Kedavra_?"

"Yes. Reuben Grey, is a friend of Deb's. He's taught me how to do it."

"Have you seen it work?"

"Yes. I've seen both him and Deborah block it. I've blocked the training curse."

Dumbledore motioned for the book and Snape handed it back. Dumbledore began to read bits out loud. "Learning how to cast and block _Avada Kedavra _is not without grave risk. Therefore, the means to do so are not included in this book. The methods will only be taught one to one by an experienced knight, and will normally be taught only to other members of the knighthood. An exception may be made if another person of sorcerer abilities or higher has a need to learn how to block this spell and only if it is reasonably evident that they will not misuse this blocking spell. Under no circumstances shall a knight cast _Avada Kedavra_ at a person for training purposes unless they have shown themselves to be proficient at blocking the _Foede_ curse multiple times over several sessions." He looked up. "Is this Reuben fellow a witch, wizard, or sorcerer? I can never keep their American labels straight."

"Wizard." _Among other things_, he thought to himself.

"I see. And the _Foede_ curse?"

"I've never seen the results. I'm told that it's a vile juvenile curse, one that we wouldn't appreciate being known here." _If I had known of it back then, I would surely have been expelled._

"Well, then, let's not let it be discovered by our students. As it is, Deborah is not going to remain as regular staff. However, it is my prerogative to keep her on as a substitute, and she's agreed to do that for me. There is more. The Ministry has also decided that they do not want us to use the quad core wands. They fear that they would be too dangerous if they fell into the hands of Voldemort's supporters. An unfounded fear, if I understand correctly, because they would be far more likely to blow themselves to bits than to harm others. But our Ministry has made it's decision. Therefore, every one of the wands that Deborah made for us has been confiscated. They did not, however, specify that any that wand that some person might have made for themselves with her assistance should be confiscated, nor did I mention the possibility that some might exist. I didn't want to confuse them by suggesting such possibilities."

Snape stared into his teacup and said nothing.

"Deborah's present quarters will remain as they are for her use in the event we need a substitute teacher, as she will likely want to stay here rather than commute."

"How did she act when you told her?" Snape could envision several scenarios, not all of them pleasant.

"Quite well. She realizes that this is coming from the Ministry, not from me. She also told me that she believes that the books were sent to them by a family member who not only bears a grudge but who she and her fellow wizards are trying to track down and bring to justice. He apparently committed a crime that was quite unthinkable and all of the Americans are cleared to kill him on sight, without furthur cause."

_Wayne_. That would have been his first suspicion as well.

"Since you're scheduled for no classes tomorrow," Snape raised an eyebrow and Dumbledore chuckled, "I've allowed for extra quiddich practice in anticipation of our first games, so you are free to leave after the party if you should desire to make a long weekend of it."

Snape shook his head. "Thanks, but I'm doing guard duty tonight."

Dumbledore smiled. "I've already arranged for someone to take over for you. Do use this opportunity. It would do you good."

* * *

><p>Snape fiddled with the food on his plate. He wanted to be away from the school, somewhere he could be distracted from thinking about what had happened that Halloween years ago. He wanted to be back at the house, especially since a crow had arrived bearing welcome news. Per Reuben's words, he had "hooked up with a vapid but enthusiastic she-vampire," and would probably not be seen for a few days. That leant a certain appeal, without Reuben constantly underfoot it would be so much easier to relax. He might even find himself enjoying his weekend.<p>

Snape became so involved in creating a model of Stonehenge with the food on his plate and in his plans for the weekend that he scarcely noticed when Quirrell came running into the hall, after all the man was notoriously over reactive. But the words Quirrell gasped made him turn his head sharply. "Troll! In the dungeons!" Then, as if to cement Snape's opinion of his worthlessness, he fell into a faint.

A troll? Perhaps the fool had seen a boggart. Or glimpsed his own shadow, the man was an abject coward. He rose and stood impatiently as Dumbledore drew the students attention and sent them off to their rooms. The teachers set off for the dungeons to deal with the shadow, boggart, rodent, or whatever. Snape fell in at the back of the line and trailed along sullenly. As he reached the steps to descend an idea came. _It's a diversion. _He turned away from the group and strode swiftly toward the third floor corridor.

He moved with purpose, past unused classroom doors and cowering figures in paintings, past the stone griffin which hid Potter and Weasley. His footsteps echoed in the deserted halls. Reaching a heavy door, he opened it. Hagrid's damned three headed beast snarled at him and snapped at the air. _Bloody wonderful. _The trap door lay shut, but there was no way to tell if someone had entered then closed it behind them. Snape cast his Patronis in a corner for a distraction and when the creature turned away to give chase he scrambled for the trap door. It almost worked.

As his hands touched the trap door he felt a crushing pain in his right leg. He found himself lifted into the air and shaken as a terrier shakes a rat. After what seemed to be many minutes the animal released it's grip, tossing him into the hallway. Snape swiftly threw the door to the room shut then leaned heavily against it. Shrieks, grunts, and crashing sounded from somewhere on another floor below. He still had his wand in hand, somehow he had managed to hold on to it. He pulled himself up to a standing position and ran with a hitching gait down to the second floor.

* * *

><p>The excitement was over by the time he pushed his way into the destroyed bathroom. There had been a troll, now subdued and in the process of removal. Potter and Weasley had been awarded points for stupidity which exceeded expectations and only Granger had been punished, a token punishment at that. Quirrell seated himself upon an appropriate throne, as useless as ever. No one noticed when Snape limped away. He could feel blood pooling in his shoe. At last he reached his quarters and could safely assess the damages. What he found made him nearly ill, his calf and lower thigh were a gory mess. He gulped down a draught of a healing potion, said a brief incantation over his leg, then collapsed on his bed.<p>

It was daylight when Snape awoke to a throbbing ache. Over the course of the night his leg had swollen and now resembled a bloody purple sausage. He curtly summoned a house elf to tend to his bed then tried to work his pants off over the leg. After the pain proved to be too great he gave up and simply cut them off and hobbled to the bathroom. Merely rinsing off the wounds brought new agonies.

One carryover from being raised in a semi muggle home proved to serve him well, the habit of keeping a well stocked medicine cabinet in his bathroom. True, the contents were not what one would find in a muggle household, but their uses were the same. He downed a generous dose of the healing potion, a far too generous dose of a strong pain potion and waited for them to take effect. The supplies on hand weren't nearly adequate to treat his wounds for long and a trip to the infirmary was quickly ruled out-that would give rise to too many questions. He needed to retrieve the stock of potions and bandaging materials he kept in his laboratory.

By luck, the hallways were nearly empty that day and he limped along, pausing when he saw students to appear as if he were waiting to hand out detentions. By the time Snape reached his destination he was breathing heavily. He gathered the necessary potions and rolls of gauze, tucked them into his robes and began laboriously making his way back to his quarters.

The climb up the dungeon steps was an ordeal. As he limped along his pain gave birth to a new plan. Overnight the temperature had dropped and there was a brisk wind. It wouldn't be pleasant but he could cut across the courtyard. Snape leaned against the stone wall, weighing his options. He hadn't been able to get clean trousers on over his leg and he dreaded cold air blowing up under his robes. Yet he wasn't entirely certain he could manage the longer route. A student passed by, hastened by a dark look. Snape sighed, then steeled himself and walked into the courtyard.

And there they were again-Potter, Granger, and the stupidest of the Weasleys. Furtive motions caught his eye. _Why is it always those three, and what in the hell are they up to now? _A heavy sigh escaped his lips. The solace of his blankets would have to be denied for a time. Some things simply must be investigated.

He felt no surprise when posturings of innocence abounded. They lied, saying that they had been reading a library book which Snape confiscated, taking five points for the sake of his aching leg. What he had seen had nothing to do with a stupid book on quiddich, the guilt on their faces told him as much. But a gust of frigid air found a way beneath his robes, convincing him that this was a mystery better pondered in the warmth of his quarters. He hobbled onward and upon arrival downed the potions then stripped and crawled into his bed. Finally sleep bestowed it gentle mercies, but not before a familiar thought crept into his mind. _Is there no end to the crap which I must bear? _


	31. Chapter 31

Chapter 31

He had somehow managed to reach the stands. Snape's head was swimming in a blur of nausea, the dizziness of strong pain potions, and of course, the pain which still ran the length of his leg. He wondered if the beast had managed to tear something loose when he shook him, his hip was throbbing and it was torture for him to sit. But he had no choice but to be there, it was the first quiddich game of the season and his house was playing. He glanced around until he was unobserved and gulped a quick draught of the pain potion.

Potter. His presence was a plague that hounded him everywhere he went. The young fool had even accosted him in the staff room the previous evening while Filch was helping him wrap his leg-now wasn't that a wonderful story to relay to his little friends? Every time he saw the boy he was reminded not of Lily but of the man she had chosen over him. And now he was going to spend who knows how long watching Potter show off as his father had. Snape fervently wished the game to be over, even if it meant that the blasted Gryffindors won. Anything to be back in his bed again. He swayed a little as he tried to focus on following the game.

Ah, and Potter had found a novel way to draw attention to himself, his broom was doing a spastic dance above the field. Snape groaned. Grandstanding would only lengthen the game and his misery. _There truly is no end to the crap which I must bear._

His eyes narrowed. Potter had nearly fallen in the latest series of arial gyrations. Slowly a realization came that was not observing a stunt. _That is a hex_. And now, Snape searched the stands to see if he could spot who was casting the hex, but it was in vain, there was a sea of faces out there, all in motion. He started muttering a counter spell, one which did not seem to be working. _The potions I took for pain. They've weakened me, I can't concentrate. _He continued to try to break the hex, it was all he could do to stay the worst of the dangerous bucking movements.

A shout broke his concentration. And now a new duty befell him, putting out the fire someone had set on his pants leg. He stamped and slapped at the flames then sat back down, thankful that none of his students had been close enough to hear him swearing. But at least the hex was broken, how he had no idea. He shifted slightly to ease his aching hip and waited for the game to be over so he could flee to his bed.

* * *

><p>"Severus?" There was no reply. <em>So, go on home, you told yourself you wouldn't go looking for him and you should have stuck with that plan.<em> But when he hadn't turned up Saturday morning, her annoyance had blossomed into a nagging sense that something might have gone wrong. She waited past noon, but no owl came and that wasn't like him at all-he was very good about letting her know if plans had to be changed. _It's very likely that Dumbledore has dumped a slew of extra duties on him, it wouldn't be the first time, she thought. _And at two, she stepped from the string outside of the grounds and walked into the school. If it were only extra duties then she might be able to help out. The worst that she envisioned was him getting angry when she butted in, and Snape being pissed off wasn't exactly a rarity.

She went, not to her own quarters but to the door of his. After all, she reasoned, he might not be alone and if she strolled in through Absinthe Alley that could lead to some interesting questions. She knocked but there was no answer. When she knocked a second time she thought she heard something like a moan. After a moment of hesitation she spoke the password for the wards and entered.

The curtain were all drawn and the room was dark, colder than usual. The smell was wrong as well, a miasma of sweat and potions. Snape was lying in bed rolled in blankets, was strange for the time of day. Then she noticed the dark splotches on the bed, smears of dried blood.

A touch to his forehead told her that he was running a fever. "Sev? What's wrong?" No reply. _Oooh, the guessing game. And I don't go away until I get an answer. _"Severus. What do you need me to do for you?" He opened his eyes slightly.

"I need the potions that are on the back of the sink." _A start, at least_. She brought them, taking a good look at the stains on the bed as she returned. Deborah supported his head as he drank from what appeared to be mixtures for pain and for healing. She waited a few minutes for the effects to begin then said, "Now, I'm going to take a look at your legs."

Blood had seeped through the bandage in several places. "These dressings are soaked, they really do to be changed." Hearing no protests, she picked a pair of scissors up from the dresser, lit the lamps with her wand, and began carefully cutting the gauze away. Once she had exposed his leg she could easily make out that something large had bitten him and that the wounds were infected. "What did this to you?"

"One of Hagrid's pets."

_Which could easily be anything from a dragon to a manticore. _"How long ago?"

"Thursday night." Plenty of time to get an infection going, she mused.

"OK, in addition to being ripped up, your leg is infected. Am I correct in assuming that this is one of those things that you don't want treated at the infirmary?"

"Yes. That would generate questions I'm not at liberty to answer."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Do you want me to help you with this?" She was relieved when he nodded his assent. "I'm going to go get some things out of my room. I'll be right back."

She returned via Absinthe Alley with a battered gym bag full of supplies. She dug in the jumble of containers and pulled out a can. "This is going to feel cold." She shook it a few times then sprayed it on his leg.

Snape let out a small squawk, but the spray worked quickly, numbing his leg. He hadn't encountered anything like it before, some American thing, he supposed. _And very useful. _"What was that?"

"Aerosol lidocane gel. It's a pressurized local anesthetic. My brother gets it for me, his company makes it. It's one of their best sellers." _And I can see why_, he thought, the relief had been nearly instantaneous. She dumped some herbs into several pieces of cloth, tied them into bags, then wet them with saline solution from a bottle, heated them with a charm, then arranged them on his leg. "Poultices. To draw out the infection. They'll need a few minutes to start working." She carefully palpated his sore hip, then prepared a different mixture as a poultice and wet it with cold water then applied it. Within a few minutes, he could feel the soreness ebb away, enough that he was now more curious about what she was using than miserable.

"What are you using?"

She was making fresh warm poultices and replacing the cooling ones on his leg. "Comfrey, lavender, calendula, and carrot on the open wounds. Don't laugh, the carrot really does work. Camphor dust, clove, yarrow leaf, and arnica flower on you hip. Is it helping any?"

"Quite a bit." The muscles in his hip were beginning to relax now and the ache was considerably better.

"A little later on I'll switch up and go to some different things when these hit the point of diminishing return. That usually works best in my experience. I'll go to clove, ginger, cumin, and turmeric for the hip, kinda sounds like the kitchen cabinet, doesn't it?" She grinned apologetically. And I'll switch over to goldenseal, mullein, sage, and carrot for the actual bites."

"Where'd you learn to use those?" She had a decent knowledge of vulnerary herbs, beyond common household remedies.

"Ruby taught me. I started out working under him in the infirmary when I was seventeen. Six months later I passed my tests for a medic and stayed on for about a year, until I got shuffled off into the armory. It was so far behind the lines that Ian figured it was a safer place to keep me. That's where I first started getting interested in making wands."

He thought a minute. "You don't use dittany?"

"I do, but not when I'm dealing with an active infection." She wrapped the leg poultices in a thick towel to keep them warmer. "I will in a bit; all things in good time. Now, for more mundane affairs. Need any examination papers graded?"

He did, in fact, have a stack of parchments to go over, all of them essays. Deborah read them aloud and made the corrections as he indicated and graded them. Occasionally she would pause to refresh a poultice or check the progress of the healing. An hour passed and she propped him up on pillows. "Time to see how things have worked out." She removed the spent poultices and discarded them.

His leg was far less swollen and reddened. He flexed it and most of the soreness was gone. "Much better."

"Yeah, and I think we can take a break now. When's the last time you ate anything?"

"Let me see if I can remember." He thought back. "Thursday evening." He hadn't eaten much then, but if it spared him a worse lecture than the one he felt was coming then a dinner roll was going to count.

To his surprise, there was no comment forthcoming. Instead, she summoned a house elf and sent him off to the kitchen with a rather large order. Snape wriggled his toes and they all worked. "Would it hurt anything if I get washed up while we wait for the food?" He didn't care for the sticky feeling of dried sweat on his skin or in his hair.

"It won't hurt at all if you feel up to it." She wanted to get the soiled sheets off of the bed and that would afford a good opportunity to do so. "But I'd use the shower instead of the tub. Running water won't hurt anything, but those open places aren't ready to soak just yet."

She sprayed his leg with the anesthetic gel and had him wait for a bit. "It will wash off, but it will still work if you give it a few minutes to soak in." A little later, Snape dug some clean clothing out of a drawer and walked off to the shower, feeling pleased that it hurt so much less to move around. Standing in the shower with water pouring over his body felt good, and he finished much more alert, and hungry. By the time he returned to the room, clean, shaved, and dressed in a fresh nightshirt, he was ravenous. And the food had arrived and a variety of tempting aromas filled the room.

After the meal he climbed back into bed and she started with the next course of poultices. An hour or so latter, she switched over to the familiar dittany of Crete, then bandaged his leg. She pulled a bottle out of her bag, measured out a dose in a cup, then added tea to fill it and handed it to him. He took it and sniffed. It smelled of citrus. "What's in this?"

"Lemon balm, honey, valerian, and alfalfa."

Sensible mixture, he thought. "So you think I should sleep now?" She nodded. He drank it and lay back, settling into a comfortable position. Shortly afterward he drifted off. Deborah chose a light blanket, covered him, and left him to his rest.

* * *

><p>When he awoke the next morning he felt comfortable and refreshed. As he walked around his leg was a little stiff but only slightly uncomfortable, the herbs and potion had worked well overnight. She appeared a short while later, spread his leg with an ointment, then reapplied the bandages. "Aloe and dittany of Crete. It's pretty much healed." The wounds had closed nicely and they didn't appear to be going to scar much, if at all.<p>

Snape felt up to the walk, so they ate in the dining hall. Afterward they went out to the stands and watched quidditch practice. He tried to explain the game to her and she watched the graceful broom maneuvers with envy. "They make it look so easy."

"It is after a while." He leaned back, enjoying the sun on his face, warming him despite the cool weather. Deborah continued to follow the swooping players as they chased and blocked the moving balls. _She looks like a small child watching the bigger ones get to play and wishing she could too._ He smiled at the sight. "Deb, the next time we get back to the house would you like me to help you with your flying?" Her expression of surprise and delight was gratifying.

"Of course I would, if you don't mind."

"Not at all." He thought for a minute. "Reuben doesn't know how to fly, does he?"

"No," she replied. "He tried to once on my broom and didn't do so well. When he kicked off he leaned forward too far and got away too fast. He made it about a hundred yards before he landed in the pigsty." She snickered wickedly. An entertaining vision of what that incident must have looked like formed in Snape's mind-Reuben cursing and sliding in pig muck. He took in the grin on Deborah's face. _She has always played second fiddle to him_. _It would do her good to be able to do something far better than he can. _She was excellent at wand making but he supposed that didn't count for very much in their never ending attempts at one-upmanship, as Reuben had expressed a total disinterest in the process. Flying would be better, and it was something the vampire obviously hadn't learned how to do and wouldn't have years of experience helping him beat her at the game.

"Next weekend, then. Remind me to bring my broom with me, and I'll see if Albus can arrange for me to get away early. After this," and he looked pointedly at his leg, "he might be persuaded that he owes me that much." As an afterthought, he added, "and this time let's choose a place for you to practice that isn't near the pig pen." He suspected that training far away from castle walls would be a prudent course of action as well.


	32. Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Snape shaded his eyes with his hand and watched as she cut a series of lazy circles above him. Her flying had improved in the few short hours they had been working. Acting on impulse he moved astride his broom and joined her in a race across the farm. He hadn't been on a broom this much in years, and didn't recall it being so enjoyable.

They turned back and saw a string beginning to fade and a familiar figure holding a suitcase walked toward the house. "Ruby!" Deborah shouted. She dropped her broom and ran to greet him. "You must have been on the beach the whole time, look at that tan!"

"Yeah, some. Hey, Snape, how's it going?"

"Fine." Snape leaned his broom against a tree and walked over.

"So, did you see me flying?" Deborah asked.

"Yeah, I saw. You didn't fall off this time." A disdainful expression appeared upon his face.

She was smiling broadly. "You should get yourself a broom and get up there with us. It's great!"

"I don't need to get splinters in my ass to fly, and I don't think it's all that great."

Snape couldn't resist. "It isn't so bad if you can manage to avoid the pig pen." Reuben scowled and walked off to the house.

He waited until he heard the door slam then Snape turned to Deborah and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, it's nothing. He's always like that when one of his women kicks him out. He lasted over a week this time. That's nearly a record."

Snape gave the faintest of smirks. Deborah laughed openly. "Same thing happens over and over again. At first the women find him to be quite charming and attentive. But after a few days of having his undivided attention it gets to be annoying, like….having a gnat buzzing around your head constantly. Then when they start to push him away he finds something to start an argument over and won't let up, so he gets shown the door. He'll wander around in a blue funk or hide up in his room for a few days. Then, he'll start buzzing our heads constantly. Again."

"He chases women and gets thrown out over and over then?"

"For the last couple of hundred years." Deborah walked over to where her broom lay and picked it up. "He was married when he was young but his wife died in childbirth and my husband and his first wife raised their three children. He's spent the last couple of hundred years looking for another Sarah Landon."

"I take it she was his wife."

"His wife, and my several times 'great' grandmother." She grinned at Snape's look of surprise. "Yes, I'm descended from Reuben. It makes it rather weird, it was strange for me too when I first thought about it-I married my own uncle, although there were several 'greats' involved in that too."

"Then Reuben would be something like your grandfather. But younger than you are. Didn't you find that strange?"

She laughed and sat on the ground and motioned for Snape to join her. When he had seated himself she lay down and settled next tohim, using his thigh for a pillow. "Almost everything about having vampires in a family of wizards is strange when I think about it, but only when I really sit and think about it from an outside point of view. Having grown up with it, it doesn't feel at all unusual. Ruby doesn't seem like a grandfather at all to me, he's my oldest friend, not only in how old he actually is, but in that I've known him nearly as far back as I can remember. I was around four or five when he and Ian first came to see my father about the problems with the outlaw vampires. Ian and my father ended up doing most of the talking, I was bored with a discussion of things I didn't really understand, and I wandered off to hunt for lizards. Reuben must have been bored with listening and not getting a word in edgewise. After a while he found me out by a big pile of rocks chasing lizards and helped me catch a few by hand. Then he let me use his wand and taught me how to use a summoning charm to catch them. It was the first time in my life that anyone actually spent their time showing me how to do magic except for when my father taught me _Lumos._ To me Reuben was most wonderful adult I had ever met. A few weeks later when he and Ian came back, he brought me a present-my first wand. It was your standard American little kid's wand, not all that great but good enough to learn a few things on. I still have it, in fact. The next year when I went to school I knew all kinds of charms and a few interesting kid curses. Everyone else was trying to turn pencils into nails, but I was already turning them into snakes."

"Now that I look back, I think Reuben missed getting to do things like that with his own kids. By the time the grandkids rolled around, it had become very awkward-think about how it would be to explain why grandfather is younger than mom and dad. Because his wife died so young, Ian and his wife were more like parents to his kids and Reuben was like that crazy uncle who shows you how to do stuff your parents wished you hadn't leaned. When he met me and kept coming along with Ian he fell back into the old routine. We were thicker than thieves."

She sighed. "Being a teenager in witch training sucked for me. I enjoyed learning anything I could about magic, but as for the rest of it, I hated damn near every minute. I was one of those 'white haired' purebloods who was supposed to be perfect, but I wasn't. I wasn't tall, graceful, or beautiful, I was short, dumpy, and not much to look at. Everything about me was wrong except for the color of my hair and of course my perfect pureblood pedigree. I also had a knack for getting into trouble because I was a vindictive little shit, especially whenever someone reminded me that I wasn't up to their standards or made fun of me. The only one who seemed to think I was anything special was Ruby. I guess it's because he was weird too. He pretty much did whatever he wanted to and to and screw what anyone else thought."

"Ruby was a lot of fun. He taught me how to shoot pistols and work with basilisks and bait werewolves and all sorts of things that were frowned upon for little pureblood girls. After all, my purpose in life, to hear my father talk, was to look good, marry well, and raise up a brood of perfect little purebloods." She was grinning and looked up at Snape. "I wasn't cut out for it. I wanted to do exciting things, not change diapers and wipe noses."

He ran a hand through her hair. He, too, had wanted to do exciting things, but his inclinations ran more toward rising to a position of power rather than adventure for it's own sake. It had set him on a path which led him straight to Voldemort. He looked down and watched as a wry smile appear on her face. After a few moments, she spoke again.

"I was constantly in trouble at school. By the time I used my infamous _Masturbari _curse on some guys who had insulted me I was already a notorious pain in the ass, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. When I got myself kicked out of school, I got myself kicked out of the house as well." She saw Snape's frown. "It wasn't like I was going to starve or anything. I was a rich kid with a hell of a nice trust fund-enough to keep me in style on the proceeds until I hit twenty five and gained control of all of the assets. I think my father figured that being an outsider on the social scene for a while would drive some sense into me. But I never wanted to be a part of that social scene and I was itching for something to do. Reuben was off at the war, I called him up, and next thing I knew, he invited me to join him. Ian had kicked him into the medical unit because he was good with potions, I needed something to do, so I ended up hanging out there. The day I turned eighteen, Ian asked me out on a date. I took him up on it.

We married when I was just shy of nineteen. Ian had never wanted me in the fighting units, so he left me in the medical unit with Ruby, and it was great. Every night I went home to my husband. And every day I spent all day hanging out with my best friend. Best of both worlds."

"Ian shuffled me off into the armory when the medical unit became too dangerous. At first I despised being moved because I couldn't goof around with Ruby all day anymore. But after a while I really got into wand work. Sean Buxton, the head of the armory, was a master wandmaker. I had some aptitude so he started showing me how to do repairs. Once I had learned a bit more, he decided to teach me how to make wands and got me helping him in some of his experimental work. After Ian died, I couldn't stand to stay there any longer. By vampire tradition, I should have succeeded him and I did for a few days. But I was only a kid with no fighting experience, and the vamps resented having a 'foreigner' in charge. It would have been a disaster if I had tried to run the show. I handed off to a general as quickly as I could and became a professional student for seven years, taking whatever appealed to me, but mostly wandmaking courses, a few healing classes, and some magical architecture classes solely because I was interested in them."

"I inherited a number of non-magical real estate properties from Ian. They weren't being run very well by the agency that handled them so when I became tired of being a student, I took over managing them. Ruby taught me how to do that; he's invested big in real estate. I did that for a few years and was bored with it. So when Albus got in touch with me I wanted out of that. I turned it over to a better agency and came here. Ruby followed me, we've always followed each other around. That's the story of my life and of me and Ruby in a nutshell. Still thicker than thieves after all of these years."

"What happened to Reuben's children?"

"They grew up. They had children of their own. They grew old. They died. None of them ever wanted to be vampires. The last one, Cora, died in the nineteen thirties. They lived longer than nils, but then witches and wizards usually do."

"Why did Reuben decide to be a vampire?" Snape could not imagine anyone wanting to be one.

Deborah turned her head and watched the horses milling about at the pasture fence. "I never discuss that. That story is Ruby's to tell if he wants to, and he almost never does. You'd have to ask him that yourself, and if you do please don't be insulted if he doesn't want to tell you. It's sort of as if someone were to stroll up to you and ask you why you chose to be a Death Eater. It's not a good one. In fact, it's rather ugly."

Snape felt a tightness in his stomach. _Is this a roundabout way of asking me why I did it? Or does she already know?_

_I think I know at least part of it. But, no, I'm not asking. If you want me to know, you'll tell me without being asked. If you don't, it's your own business. We all have our secrets about the things we've done that we aren't particularly proud of. God knows, I've got a few of my own. _

She broke off quickly and neither spoke a word. Snape shifted after a few moments of uncomfortable silence and settled down beside her. She turned and lay with her head on his arm. They listened to the sounds of the few insects who still flew about on the unusually balmy November day, breathing in the odor of the sun warmed grasses and the dead leaves the wind had piled in drifts around them. Deborah drew her wand and began to lazily arrange the leaves into a fort around them. He took out his wand and joined in on the childhood witch game. Soon the quivering walls of the play castle loomed twelve feet on high on either side.

The sun began to sink lower in the sky. He rolled himself over and pressed his lips to hers. Her eyes narrowed and a sly smile appeared on her face. She reached for him and ran her fingers up his back then ruffled his hair. He pulled himself up and sat cross legged next to her, leisurely unfastening the buttons of his dark frock coat. She conjured fragrant honeysuckle and jasmine, strewing them on the ground with a careless looping waves of her wand, then lay it aside. Snape pulled off his clothes then cast a warming charm to ward off the chill he was feeling in the shaded grass., The insects continued their chorus throughout the afternoon, unimpressed by the most ancient of witching games being played out in the rustling tower at the edge of the meadow.


	33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

A long two weeks had passed since he had last been at Glas Tann. The previous weekend had been odious-accompanying students to Hogsmeade. Dungbombs, the nose biting teacup, and an anonymous howler sent to him at the breakfast table the next day, admonishing him to wash his hair for a change-those had been fairly unoriginal. But if he ever got his hands on whoever invented that "random loud farting sounds " jinx, well, that person would be in for a year of detentions at the very least.

He strolled out of a string at the edge of the pasture. The black mare trotted to the fence then rubbed her head against his hand. Snape scratched her for a few minutes through the rails then headed off for the house.

The kitchen was empty as he entered through the side porch, save for a couple of house elves preparing what looked to be a roast. Snape climbed the stairs and went to the bedroom next. Deborah wasn't in there either, but a couple of her dresser drawers were pulled out. He pushed them back in and frowned slightly. Usually the house elves had straightened the bedroom by this time, yet the bed was unmade as well. Since they weren't allowed in the room when neither of them was in the house, he began to think that she wasn't home. As if in answer to his unspoken questions, two house elves appeared and began setting the room straight.

His next stop, the laboratory, yielded no clues to her whereabouts either. He moved on to the library and found Reuben inside, staring at the computer monitor, so engrossed that he didn't even notice as Snape entered. "Reuben."

The first sign that something was amiss was the startled reaction, Reuben was not a jumpy sort. The expression on his face was all wrong too, a nonchalant smile coupled with furtive glances elsewhere in the room. "Oh, Snape. I wasn't expecting you. What's up?'

"Nothing really. I'm looking for Deb."

"Oh, yeah." Again there was an odd quality to his expression. "She's not here right now. I'm not sure when she will be back."

"Do you know where she went?"

"She's out doing some stuff with a few of the other knights."

Snape's eyes narrowed. Something was definitely afoot. Reuben was generally not abrupt. In fact, Reuben usually went above and beyond the call of duty to give an in-depth answer to any question as to what Deborah was up to. And it wouldn't be complete without commentary and colorful speculations. _He isn't making eye contact either. Perhaps because he knows that I'm a legilimens? _Snape walked to the desk and sat beside him. Reuben appeared to be utterly absorbed in something on his screen, not even glancing to the side when Snape leaned closer.

_Let's see. I'll try the direct approach first_, Snape thought. "Reuben. What is going on with Deborah?"

"Nothing is going on. She went out to do something."

Reuben had put the usual mental blocks up, but for a bare instant a single thought escaped and flashed in Snape's brain. _Wayne_. "Reuben, did she go out hunting for Wayne?" Anger was beginning to seep into his voice, he had grown tired of attempts to keep him in the dark.

"Why would you think that?"

"Because, for one thing, you're being extremely evasive. Secondly, you're thinking about Wayne. Thirdly, there is nothing so fascinating about the screensaver that came up thirty seconds ago which would account for your continuing to devote your total attention to it. Fourthly, I've been here for over a minute and you haven't uttered a single insulting comment about my 'Snape coat' yet. Do I really need to provide you with an exhaustive list?"

Reuben sighed and closed his eyes for a few seconds, then turned to Snape. Finally making eye contact, he said, "Yes. She left three days ago with a team and a pair of search trained basilisks. They had a lead on a place they think he might have been. I haven't heard anything from her since."

"Thank you." Snape pondered that for a moment. She was gone, hunting down her insane brother, and there had been no contact since she left. "Precisely, what do you know?"

"Victor Black came here Tuesday morning. The nils found a crime scene in Southeastern Ohio. It sounded exactly like Wayne's type of work- several teenage boys molested and tortured then killed, looked to have happened around two months ago. She left with Vic and four other knights to check the place out."

"And why would they think it would be Wayne who did this and not some ordinary muggle psychopath?"

Reuben shot him a troubled glance. "Because the nil police and the coroner can't figure out anything that could have killed those kids. They had been severely tortured, but it seemed to be aimed more at causing psychological distress, and it the injuries they identified were not enough to have killed them. No traces of poison, nothing that could have accounted for their deaths. It was as if someone raped and tortured them for a while then those kids all sat down and decided it would be a good time to just stop living. They seem to have been killed by something untraceable. Something like _Avada Kedavra_. There are a few other things too, but Vic didn't have time to go into them." He paused for a moment. "Wayne left a living victim who could identify him the last time. It looks as if he's learned from his mistakes."

Snape put his elbow on the desk and rested his chin on his hand. Already he was beginning to worry. "So, how do we get in touch with her?"

"We can't. When they're in the field we can't contact them. They have to contact us."

"Could we send an owl or a crow?"

"It might be possible to do that, but we don't know what is happening on their end right now. If they're stalking the bastard and an owl or crow came swooping down with a message, it would give their location away. Nils would notice something different and if Wayne sees a bird acting strangely it would tell him where they are. He might get away, or it could get Deb and the rest of them killed."

"So basically you're telling me that we just have to sit here and wait until we hear something, one way or another."

"Exactly."

As it was, they didn't have to wait very long. Deborah arrived a little later and ran up the steps without a word, but not before Snape caught a whiff of a horribly foul odor, the scent of rotted flesh. She came back down a half hour later, hair wet and smelling of a little too much cologne. She joined the two of them in the kitchen, waved off Hoople's offers of food, and asked for vodka and Squirt instead. She sat at the table and looked at Snape. "I'm guessing that Reuben filled you in on what I was doing."

"He did somewhat. What happened?"

"We went looking around for Wayne after we checked out the crime scene and didn't find him." She took a long draught from her drink. "What we did find was another site in a neighboring area, one that the nils hadn't discovered yet. Same as the first, but a month or so older."

"Do you think it was Wayne?" Reuben asked.

"We know for certain that it was Wayne. He left some interesting personal insults, a rant, and a map to the place at the first site, one drawn on the wall magically, so the nils couldn't see it. His way of claiming bragging rights, I guess."

"Did the basilisks pick up anything?"

"They trailed him to the edge of a woods. That's where the trail vanished, so we know that he's using apparation at least part of the time. His victims all fit the same pattern- 12-16 year old males, all abducted on weekdays after school lets out. They don't all come from the area where he takes them, some of the victims in Ohio were from as far away as Nevada. He seems to be warding the sites against sound and sight, they were both fairly close to populated areas. There was a witch who lived near one of them and he hadn't seen or heard anything unusual, so he seems to know how to go beyond ordinary nil warding and ward against us as well."

"Shit. Hoople, can you get me a drink? What she's having. Snape?" Reuben watched and saw the nod. "Make it two and bring the bottles to the table. So, whose basilisks were you using?"

"A pair from the general stable. They weren't bad. I had thought about taking ours along, but they would probably just have gotten in the way. Dorothy might have picked up a little, but Mickey's still too foolish to hang around a real site. He'd have gotten bored and started trouble."

"Yeah, he's still pretty foolish."

"So, what are you going to do now?" Snape asked.

"Wait until Wayne makes his next move. There isn't much to go on. We kind of think he's not too far from the area because the squib psychologists at the council office say he'd probably pick killing sites near where he's living so he could enjoy seeing the coverage on the local news. But that is still a heck of a big area, and there aren't all that many magicals in that region, which could be why he picked it." She poured more vodka and Squirt on top of her half melted ice cubes and took another long drink. She took another long drink. A few drops dribbled from the corner of her mouth, she wiped them away on the back of her hand, then held her hand a few inches from her face and looked at it with a revolted expression. "Shit! I can still smell it!" She ran up the stairs. From below they could faintly hear the sounds of retching, followed by the sounds of the shower running.

The pair of wizards at the table sat silently for a while, sipping their drinks. A house elf walked up the steps and returned shortly after. "Mistress says that she will be back down in a few minutes." The elf slipped away quietly.

"Why did they make her go?"

"Make her go?" Reuben laughed bitterly. "She made them take her. She claimed blood right, the right of a family member to attempt to settle a wrong committed against another family. The victim's family passed on their right to deal with him, so her family's blood right is next in line." He tapped a cigarette out of his pack and lit it.

"So, now she has claimed the right to track him down?"

"That, Snape, and she also claimed the right to execute him. Blood right isn't only about catching. It's also about killing."

Smoke hung heavy between them. Snape tried to picture Deborah killing her younger brother and he couldn't make the image form in his mind. He had no doubts that she could fight in self defense, she hardly seemed like one who would be a cowering victim. But coldly killing? It seemed almost fantastic, a strange unfounded notion. He told Reuben as much.

"Snape, you've known her for a few months. I've known her for years, since she was five. You've seen the tip of the iceberg, I've seen what lies under the surface as well. She's not at all vicious…up to a point. But beyond that point, and raping, torturing, and murdering innocent young boys lies far beyond that point, she's like retribution incarnate." He took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled slowly. "Right about now if I were Wayne I'd be slitting my own throat, because if she catches up to him before he catches up with her she's going to make it very, very ugly."

Deborah returned a bit later, carrying a pack of cigarettes. "Let me see your lighter," she murmured, reaching toward Reuben. "I left mine in the Pump House Motor Inn. A fine example of the no-tell-motels we usually end up in on a hunt," she explained to Snape. "You'd have liked it, Ruby. I got stuck rooming with Jules and he took full advantage of the free all night adult movies."

"That's why they took you along! Nobody wanted to share with Jules!" Reuben turned to Snape. "He's into men, or rather men are into him, if you know what I mean, and his porn selections are pretty disgusting."

Snape couldn't care less about what Jules was into or what was into Jules. He glared at Reuben. _Yeah, like we need you stirring the pot._

Deborah leaned back in her chair. "He's also a damn good tracker," she said, "even if he does keep you awake half the night hearing the soundtracks to his porn. Damn it, why do all of the soundtracks have to be so heavy on the bass? Anyways, he found a few longleaf pine needles at the site, so that gives us something to go on. He's either based somewhere in southeast of the US, or if were lucky, he's fairly local and we can start looking for places they've been planted in a roughly two hundred mile area, that is if their theory about him wanting to follow the local coverage is correct. A few other things he found point to the eastern Ohio/ West Virginia area. Oh, Sev, Ruby is full of shit. If he hasn't told you already, I went because I claimed blood right, not because they needed someone to room with Jules."

"He said something about blood right and I still don't understand why you felt it necessary to become personally involved in chasing after a murderer." He stared down the considerable length of his nose at her, hoping to impress her with the full extent of his disapproval.

She used her glass to make wet looping circles on the tabletop for a moment before she spoke. "I should think that it would be fairly obvious. Wayne is my brother. It's my responsibility to help deal with him."

"And how could you possibly construe anything that Wayne does to be something that you should be held accountable for? You aren't assisting him. It's not as if he's a child you're responsible for, he's a grown adult."

"He's still a member of my family and my family isn't going to sit by while he rapes and murders and not try to stop him. Eric went the last time, I took this time. Someone from the family needed to be there." Her voice was icy but even.

"Why? Because it might make you two look a little bit less noble in front of the other purebloods if you don't go? Is this some sort of a pureblood thing that I'm not supposed to be able to understand?" he said in a silky voice.

"Where in the hell is this coming from? Sev, what in the fuck is it to you that I'm trying to help bring Wayne in? What would you do if a murdering pervert was running around Hogwarts?"

"That's different. I have a responsibility to keep the students safe from…"

"What responsibility? Did Albus recently appoint you to be the school security guard? Because last time I checked you were employed there as a potions professor, not a policeman."

"Guys, this is getting a little out of hand," Reuben broke in helpfully.

"That's really not any of your concern," Snape said in a steely voice, as he stared angrily at Deborah.

"Fine. I'm out of here.. Have fun." Reuben finished his drink with a single gulp, picked up his cigarettes and lighter, then left, the sound of his footsteps ringing like an angry staccato on the wooden steps to the upstairs.

Snape and Deborah glared at each other for a moment before he broke the silence. "You are perfectly aware that your so-called cousin counts on me to do far more for him than to teach potions to a bunch of disinterested young dimwits."

She leaned forward. "And you are perfectly aware that I'm not one of your disinterested young dimwits running off to engage in some sort of a grand adventure. Also, for your information, there were six of us along on that trip and what we did was dig through rotten corpses looking for clues. Ever have someone's hand come off at the wrist when you were trying to move them? I did, and that's a fair example of the charming sort of work I've been doing for the last few days. Even if Wayne had made an appearance, which he did not, it would have been six of us and a pair of basilisks against one self taught witch. The only real danger I was in was of throwing up, which we all did eventually."

"All it would have taken would have been for him to jump out from behind the trees and throw one _Avada Kedavra _and the entire lot of you would be dead."

"We block for that before we go into the field, and you know that we know how to do it." She shook her head, as if to clear it. "Sev, why are we having this argument? What's this all about?"

"I think that should be fairly obvious," he said with a slight curl to his lip.

"It's not obvious to me, so let's pretend for the sake of clarity that I'm not all that bright and totally oblivious to whatever it is that you're angry about and kindly explain it to me."

"I don't have to pretend," he replied with a sneer.

"Fine, have it your way." Her voice became low and precise with controlled fury and she stared directly at him. "Here's exactly what I'm angry about. I am a competent wizard who went off with five other equally competent wizards and two basilisks to chase down one self taught magical who has been preying on nothing more formidable than kids, most of them muggle kids. I've had corpse hands pull off when I was moving them. I had a gassy rotten corpse's guts explode all over me. I have worked my ass off in stink, rot, and puke, stayed in a filthy motel room that smelled like piss and used rubbers, and listened to lousy gay porn films while I was trying to sleep for the last three days. Then I come home and walk right into insinuations that I've been doing something far too dangerous for someone of my questionable abilities and on top of that I get hit with the 'guess-what-you-did-that-made-me-mad-at-you' game. And I am so not going to play that game. So, if you want to play, you're going to have to play with yourself. And if you decide to keep on playing then you should go out and buy yourself a box of maxi pads with wings because if you're going to march in that army you might as well be wearing the uniform!" She stood, slammed the chair into the table, and stalked off and up the steps, leaving Snape sitting at the table looking both disgusted and mortally offended. After a few moments he rose and shoved his chair into the table with a satisfying crash.

He raced up the steps and stood outside the closed bedroom door and screamed "Bollocks! I'm the only one in this house who has any common sense! You went out running around on some sort of field trip with your buddies, chasing after a known murderer who could have been hiding at that second place, waiting to kill every one of you! You could have at least let me know what you were up to and I would have gone with you and watched out for the bastard so he couldn't sneak up on you and curse you behind your backs!" Snape continued his with his heated soliloquy, so absorbed in venting his spleen that he did not see five wizards Hoople had led up the steps and who clustered at the end of the hall watching him rail at the closed door, exchanging pointed looks among themselves.

Deborah emerged from Reuben's room and called out to the group at the end of the hall. "We're going to be setting up in the lab. If you'll come with me…" then turned and walked away. They filed past the now quietly seething Snape, none speaking but all giving him appraising sideways glances as they passed, following Deborah into the lab. Reuben was the last to enter. He flashed Snape a smarmy grin as he pulled the door shut.

* * *

><p>"So, what was that little performance all about?" Victor asked as they spread photographs and papers on the lab stations.<p>

"Snape's having a bad day," Reuben informed them, still grinning. "He thinks that Deborah was putting herself in grave danger going after Wayne with only five of y'all and two basilisks to defend her delicate person against all one of him."

"That boy would make one hell of a lookout." one commented. "We should take him along with us next time to watch our backs." The statement brought on chuckles of amusement and a couple of guffaws.

"Snape isn't used to me going off on errands, and I wouldn't be totally shocked to find out that someone might have hinted that it could be a bit more dangerous than it actually was." She shot Reuben a dark glare, not buying into the expression of pure innocence she received in return for a single instant. "I'd be quite surprised if none of the rest of you caught any flak when you got home. I'm going to go out and see if I can iron things out a little while you get set up. I'll be back in a few." She left and went into her room.

Snape was lying on the bed. He affected not to notice her as she entered, choosing to watch the ceiling fan overhead. "Severus," she said quietly, walking toward him. He turned away and settled himself on his side with his back to her, appearing to be as comfortable as one can be lying fully clothed on top of a bed. _So, it's going to be like that, _she thought, and kicked off her shoes then climbed up and lay beside him, not speaking. After a few moments she reached out and lay her arm across his side. She could feel his muscles stiffen against her. She waited.

"Why didn't you at least tell me that you were going off to hunt Wayne?" he asked. She could still hear anger in his voice, but it had cooled a little. It was a start.

"Fair enough," she said. "When the guys came for me it looked as if we were only going to be gone a few hours and digging around at a crime scene for whatever clues the nils hadn't spoiled with their investigation. We didn't realize that we were going to find directions to an uncontaminated kill site until we were on the scene and Jules cast the revealing charm. From there it snowballed. We took off for the other location immediately thinking that we might just be lucky enough that there were survivors. When we got there we walked into one of the biggest nightmares I have ever seen."

"You could have called and left word with Reuben," he said in an accusing tone.

"Yeah, I could have and I probably should have, but I just didn't think to do it." She sighed. "Reuben is used to me taking off on knight's errands. And I had no idea at the time that it would take so long. I thought I'd be back before tonight easily. I truly didn't anticipate that you'd be here before I got back or that you'd be this angry."

"Knight's errands?" Snape snorted. "And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"In this case it meant checking out a crime scene. It's any action you take on behalf of the group or one of the other individuals; an investigation, chasing down a criminal, an execution, it can be almost anything. There's a kind of point system we have about providing services to the organization or to each other, and that is too long and involved for me to explain right now because I only have a few more minutes and then I have to get back in there and go over what we've found." She moved closer, her chest against his back, and he leaned back against her slightly.

"So you went to get points of some sort."

"Sev, I went because I claimed blood right. I did that back on the night that the Archers came to the school, the boy and his family. You hadn't woke up yet. I didn't hurry up and claim blood right when the guys came over on Tuesday so I could grab some knightly brownie points. Is that what you thought?"

"Something like that," he said, his voice still had a slight edge but the volume had toned down, his speech barely louder than a whisper. "Except that I didn't know about the points. What is that all about?"

"It's pretty much our way of making sure that everyone carries their share of the load, and that no one sits around on their hands making everyone else pick up all of the work. Like I said earlier, it's complicated and I'll explain it to you if you want me to, but it takes a while, and it will have to wait."

"So now your friends are all sitting in the lab laughing at me while they tally up their points."

"If I know my friends, they're in there drinking up the beer and telling filthy jokes." She chuckled. "Believe me, we've seen everything going into each other's houses. My uncle Caleb's now ex-wife sailed an ashtray across the room and dropped him like a stone in front of us one time. Another time, one of Reuben's girlfriends accused him of screwing around with one of the guy's wives, not knowing that her husband was standing next to him and had been out with all of us on the same call. And Bill,… Bill's wife or girlfriend or significant other or whatever you want to call her paraded out naked and gave him a big kiss last year before she realized that we were rounding the corner right behind him. So your being pissed off at me is hardly anything to write home about. You'll have to come up with something better than that to get talked about at our Christmas party."

After a few seconds, he spoke, this time more calmly. "I don't like the idea of you being out there somewhere in danger, chasing around after something like Wayne. I was concerned for your safety."

She pulled a little closer to him. "Funny that you should mention that. I felt the same way when I saw you with your leg all chewed up."

"Oh. That."

"Yeah, that." She rolled back and sat up. "I have to get back in there, I'm holding things up. We shouldn't be very long, we're just writing up our report. Drop in if you want to and I'll introduce the crew to you." She stood up, stretched, then padded away softly.

Snape lay alone on the bed. After a while he rolled onto his back and resumed watching the blades of the ceiling fan revolve slowly above him. He was not in a mood to meet the American wizards, particularly after they had witnessed the scene in the hall. He didn't feel like eating either, the argument had ruined his appetite quite effectively.

It had all been so unexpected. What had started out as worries about her safety had blossomed into an ugly altercation. He had wanted to get out of there, head back to the school and more familiar forms of aggravation. Only the thought of appearing to be a coward had stayed his retreat. But in a way, some good had come out of it. They had fought and it hadn't been a disaster. Once again they had been able to be angry and offended with each other and work their way past it. Some things _were _different now. His fears of causing an irreparable rift with one quick slip of the tongue retreated a little further.

For some time he lay and watched the shadows in the room deepen as twilight passed on into night. It was getting cooler as well. _Why am I lying here on top of a perfectly good bed when I could be in it? _he mused. Finally he undressed and crawled into the bed, pulling the covers up closely under his chin. Sleep came nearly instantaneously. Later when full darkness had arrived he awakened to movement, the sway of the mattress as Deborah slipped in next to him. He stretched out his arm and she lay her head on it then rested an arm across his chest. "They're all gone, and Reuben took off with Victor to do a little bit of hunting around for Wayne and a large bit of avoiding getting his ass chewed out for egging things along. We'll have the house to ourselves this weekend.

Snape's mood brightened considerably at the news. _Really? All to ourselves?_

_If you don't count house elves or basilisks, _she replied, joining him in their silent private language. _Have any ideas on how we can amuse ourselves for the next couple of days? _

_I believe that I may be able to think of something. _They lay nestled in warmth and softness, resting quietly until sleep overtook them.


	34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

The two horses and their riders passed through the woods, following a path striped by the shadows of nearly bare branches. The black mare took the lead, a chestnut gelding snorted and danced at her heels, trying to break ahead of her. "I hate this horse," Deborah muttered periodically.

Snape pulled his mare to a stop and Deborah drew alongside him. "Why is that animal so miserable? It should have settled down by now."

"Because Reuben lets him whatever the hell he wants to." Even standing chestnut pawed and tossed his head. "Ill-mannered horses are always the best because they have so much more 'spirit' than the other ones."

Snape let out a startled cry and pulled his mare aside quickly, dodging a flash of yellow teeth. "Blasted thing! It nearly got me that time!" He moved his mount a few feet away. "He needs his head examined for keeping that thing!"

"It's been examined plenty of times. Unfortunately it's never been repaired." She pulled back hard on the reins as the horse tried to move off. "I don't know why anyone would think it's cute when a half ton of horse acts like this. It makes me wonder if basilisks like horsemeat."

They rode a few hundred yards further, then she called for a halt. "This time follow me. I want to show you something." She turned the surly horse up a hill.

At the summit, they rode into a recently cleared area. Stakes and strings marked off a mowed area. "Are you going to be putting up a building here?" Snape asked.

"Yes," she said, reining in the horse as it tried to turn it's hindquarters to kick him. "A little present for Ruby, and indirectly a large one for me. He's going to have his very own house."

"Oh?" Snape looked the area over. It was a pleasant location, about a quarter of a mile from the main house, with mature trees that could be attractive with a little effort. "I wasn't aware that he wanted his own place."

"He isn't aware that he does yet." She started to guide the red horse around the perimeter and Snape followed. "He needs one, though. He's been hanging out with me for too long. He needs to find himself a sultry young vamp to settle down with, or at least a place to entertain the sultry young vamps he's not going to settle down with." She pointed to another marked off area a short distance away. "I figure that a four horse barn would fit well there, and then run a pasture down over the other side of the hill. That would get this nasty jackass out of my stables. Stick a pool in the back yard and he should be good to go."

"But you two are supposed to be inseparable."

"We are. A short piece down the road isn't much of a separation but it might be enough."

"Enough to keep the two of you in each other's good graces."

"Well, yes, that too." She stretched, then grinned at him. "But mostly to give him a place of his own for when he gets hooked up with someone. You don't know how badly I want him to find someone, just as long as I don't have to live with her. Ruby has a bad habit of bringing his women in to stay at my house. He's not as much of a one night stand guy as he lets on to be. The last woman he was serious about was a decent sort, but it didn't work out, mostly because Ruby wouldn't get off his ass and get them their own place. Two women under the same roof is always trouble and I feel bad about the whole thing now because I was the one who made her want to leave."

Snape shifted a bit in the saddle. "What happened?"

"It's a long story but make it short when I was living back in the states Ruby showed up at the house one day with a woman named Colleen. She was kind of a conservative type-someone you'd never expect to see with Ruby, yet they were good together. But the two of us couldn't stand being in the same house for very long because we each had our own ways and neither one of us could talk Ruby into getting his own place. He just couldn't see or didn't want to see that a war was breaking out under his nose. A few weeks back she called me up right out of the blue to see if I wanted to go for lunch, and we did. She mentioned that she's not seeing anyone and I mentioned that he isn't either and Colleen said that she's thinking about stopping by to say hello around Christmas, which means that Ruby damn sure better have his own place by then. So, here we are," she said, waving her hand to indicate the places marked out on the ground. "I sent out some crows and I'm going to dump some of my points into making Ruby a love nest of his very own. There will be a crew here this afternoon to lay out the enchantments so he can't see what's up and start work. If all goes well it finished and ready by the first of December."

"In other words, you're setting him up."

"Yes, I am, after all what are friends for?" She flashed a smarmy grin. "Don't look at me that way. It's for his own good. Even if the thing with Colleen doesn't work out he still needs his own place. I need him to have his own place. It's killing two birds with one stone."

"Yes, but how is Reuben going to feel about that?"

"He'll either be pissed off or delighted at first, but however he starts out he's going to end up liking it. Ruby hates to be alone all of the time but having him constantly underfoot isn't good for either of us. We tend to both fool around when we're together and never get anything done. You wouldn't know it by how he acts but Ruby is excellent at coming up with new types of potions. He has a good head for investments too. But as it is, it's just too damn convenient for him to waste all of his time on permanent vacation at my place. When we're not under the same roof we can work together and get things done. Potion making isn't my thing but I'm not bad as his assistant. The trouble is that when we're living together that makes it too convenient to find distractions and never get down to any real work."

Snape pulled the black mare off a few feet to avoid getting bitten, the chestnut was inching within biting distance again. He took a long appreciative look at the wooded "I hope that you're not thinking of putting up some modern monstrosity here."

"Never," she replied. "It wouldn't look right. Ruby loves gothic, but it would probably be over the top in this setting. Tudor would look nice but he thinks that sucks. Here's what I had thought of, what do you think?-three story red brick Victorian in a mostly "L" shape with three turrets?"

He pictured it in his mind. "It might look quite nice. Main entry into the middle turret?"

"I was thinking more to the side of it, closer to midpoint on the smaller wing. I'm going along the lines of a Queen Anne home I saw the last time I was in San Francisco. You would walk up steps into a small covered porch that entered into a nice wide foyer. As you entered there would be a cloakroom on your right and then to the left a sitting room that continued into the turret. Second floor turret would be part of the master bedroom. Third floor, I'm not sure of until the architect comes…"

She yanked the reins back just in time, the chestnut had crept closer to Snape and was reaching for his thigh with it's long yellow teeth.

"Son of a bitch! He almost got me that time-Deb, why don't we tie these horses up and take a look around? I'm sick of having to dodge that vile jackass." Snape swung off of his horse without waiting for her answer. _I can probably apparate away faster than I can get the mare to move_, he thought. _If worst comes to worst I'd rather be trampled than bitten._

They left the horses and wandered around the hilltop. Snape discovered the dried stalks of quite a few vulnerary herbs and pointed them out to her. There were a few surprises as well. "Balmony. That's not native, it's been planted there. It makes me wonder exactly what sorts of magic were going on here."

"Yeah. There's a bunch of it over the side of the hill, it's seeded itself so it has probably been growing around here for a while. There's plenty of black henbane, knotweed, yew, and alder in these parts too, more than you would expect from someone's basic magical stock garden. Someone's been up to no good, I'd expect."

Snape squatted and pulled a few leaves off of a small evergreen shrub. "Barberry." He looked around then stood and walked a little way and called her over. "Tormentilla, and over there are several different artemisias. That looks like aconite at the edge of the trees." He turned back to Deborah. "Reuben ought to feel right at home here. He can get half of his ingredients merely walking out of his back door."

"Yeah, if he's planning on doing dark magic. I never really paid that much attention to this area other than to ride through it. Weird stuff here. Mullein and valerian. I wouldn't think anything of them if it weren't for the other things we found, but if I recall correctly, valerian combined with some of the other things here makes some heavy duty stuff."

"It can." He walked over to a stand of trees with scarred trunks. "Turkish sweet gums. These have to be heavily charmed to even grow in this climate, and these look like they've been here for at least a couple of hundred years." He inspected the trunk closely. "These haven't been tapped in a very long time."

"I'm not sure what has gone on here in the last couple of hundred years. The house was a mess, it looked as if it hadn't been lived in for a century or more. My father would have known more about it, but we never really talked about this place except to say that it was here and to lord it over people that we owned the crystal cave, without mentioning that there are at least a dozen of them that we know about scattered around England and a couple in France. There was an old wreck of a board house where Ruby's house is going, more of a shanty really. It was falling down so I had the house elves destroy it."

"I'd have liked to had a chance to see if there were any sort of records left in that house. Which elves disposed of it?"

She thought a moment. "I put Hoople in charge of that, so he either did it or would know who did. He might have plucked a few things out if they seemed interesting-he's a packrat that way."

They walked to the horses and rode back toward the barn. Snape mulled over the types of plants he had seen. Somewhere in the back of his mind knew he had read of a potion that used many of those ingredients, but he couldn't recall what it would be or even where he had seen it. He grew so preoccupied with trying to remember that Reuben's voice caught him by surprise.

"It's about time the two of you showed up. I'll take the horses. You've got company inside."

"I thought you were going away for the weekend," Snape said with a sneer.

"I was," Reuben replied. "But since one of us has decided that she is going to claim blood right I was obligated to come back for her."

Deborah jumped off the horse and tossed the reins to Reuben then ran for the house. Snape watched as she raced up the steps and into the house.

Reuben stroked his horse's forehead. "Snape, I really didn't come back to screw up your weekend. We put out the two faced fliers and we've gotten some good leads on where Wayne is. A couple of eyewitnesses placed him at a convenience store New Martinsville, West Virginia. The clerk said he seems familiar, like he's been in there before. We had to come for her." House elves appeared to care for the horses and Reuben began walking toward the house.

"Two faced flyers?" Snape murmured in a questioning tone as he fell in beside him.

Reuben stopped and felt around in a jacket pocket then withdrew a rumpled piece of paper and unfolded it. Snape leaned in. A mug shot of a surly looking teenage girl was followed by an account that she had run away from home, details of height, weight, and persons she might be associated with, and a telephone number to contact if she was seen. "That image is a rather useful little charm," Reuben explained, " and while we can see it and the nils can't, what the nils _can_ see is hidden from us' unless we know how to reverse the spell. Now, this is what the nils see when they look at this."

Reuben tapped the edge of the paper and the image began to change to one which had become familiar over the past few weeks, that of Deborah's fugitive brother. Beneath the photograph was a warning that he was a violent sexual predator and should not be approached with a number to call if he was seen. It was very similar in style to the first image Snape had seen. "We gave him a fake name then put a taboo on that fake name so that if someone would report him to any nil agency instead of calling the number we gave them we will still know about it and be able to close in first. Nice little piece of magic, isn't it?" Snape nodded as Reuben refolded the flyer and pocketed it.

"And if Wayne removes the charm himself?"

"He can't. Only a few of us know this little trick, or how to remove the charm. It's not something that gets shared outside of our circles. And I need to get back up there with the rest of the crew. We'll be leaving in a few minutes, so if you have to talk with Deb, now is the time." Reuben turned and strode rapidly toward the house.

Snape watched as he stepped onto the porch and entered. Deborah and Reuben were off to some sort of adventure, his curiosity burned, and he was, once again, being left behind to wonder what was happening. He could busy himself in the lab or spend a rewarding day in the library without the irritation of being interrupted. He could go riding and make a closer inspection of the plantings near where Reuben's house would be built-his curious mind was already speculating about sort of magic they had been intended for.

His eyes narrowed. Anything he might do either here or at Hogwarts, if he chose to return, could not possibly be as interesting as traveling to America to track down a fugitive. He had never been out of the British Isles.

Snape made his entrance to the sounds of several mingled conversations. Reuben looked up then walked over. "Dudes, this is Snape," he announced. Evidently the group already had an idea of who he was because no one looked surprised, then he recognized a few of the people who had been present when Deborah had returned from searching for Wayne. His face flushed at the memory of the altercation that had occurred then.

"Ok, you've met Victor before," Reuben continued. "Jules, Higgins, Birdie…"

Most of them, from "Ruby" to "Tinkerbelle" (an extremely tall thin woman with short thick strawberry blonde hair) seemed to either go by their last name or some sort of odd nickname. Several approached him to ask about magic in Britain or Hogwarts-either Reuben or Deborah, who they nearly all referred to as "Sis," had evidently told them a bit about the school. Snape felt himself becoming both irritated and uncomfortable as the odd man out in a group of people who shared the annoying habit of referring to him as "Dude." He discretely moved off and slipped up the stairs.

A duffle bag sat on top of their bed, and Deborah was checking the contents. At the sound of the door she turned. "I'm sorry about this, but I absolutely have to go. Believe me, I'd rather stay here with you than hunt for Wayne. I'll be glad when this whole sorry mess is over." She walked over to him and slipped an arm around his waist, resting her head against his chest.

"I want to go with you."

She pulled back. "That wouldn't be a good idea."

"And why not?" Snape's voice was tightly even. "Am I too quaint and parochial to fit in with your friends? Or is it because you think that I don't have the stomach for it?"

"It's nothing like that." She sat on the bed and invited him with a gesture, which he ignored. "Right now there are many reasons it's a bad idea, but it all boils down to you're not familiar with how our teams operate and because you don't understand our strategies we could end up getting you hurt, or worse. It's not because we're better at what we do than you would be. It's because you don't understand how we do what we do. A real manhunt is not a good place to find out how we work. Besides," she added, "this isn't my call."

"Who makes the call, then?" he asked in a silky voice.

"Caleb. If you want to go along then talk to him. He's downstairs. But it's not likely that he'll take you along on a hunt without…"

Snape was already on the stairs. He heard voices and tracked them into the dining room, where the group had gathered around the table and were reviewing maps and making plans to set up a headquarters.

"Who is Caleb?" Snape asked loudly. Several heads turned in his direction.

"That would be me, son," came a soft drawl. A tall grey haired wizard rose from a chair and strolled over to stand before him. "What's on your mind?"

"I want to go along."

"You do? Then we should sit down and talk about it." Caleb turned back toward the group. "Ruby, I'm parched. Could you please send that Hoople fellow in with a couple of beers?" He met Snape's eyes. "Let's go on in here," he said quietly, moving off toward the kitchen.

Caleb sat at the table and after a moment Snape followed suite. The lanky gray haired man studied him for a moment. "Now tell me why in the hell you would want to tag along with us. Do you have any idea of what we're going to be doing?"

Snape returned his gaze and his chin lifted slightly. "I believe that you're going to attempt to capture Wayne Jenkins."

"No, that's not what we're going to be doing." Snape's brows furrowed a little but he waited for the explanation. He didn't like to ask questions if he could avoid doing so-a question could limit the reply to a narrow answer and he found that silence often brought more useful information.

Hoople entered with the beer. "Thanks, little fellow. Much appreciated." He took a long draught while Snape ignored his drink and watched. "Ah, that was cold! That's the best that can be said about the abominable piss water Sis and Ruby favor." A fleeting smile crossed Snape's face. "Now, let me explain what we're going to do. We're going out to attempt to execute Sis's brother, and she's the executioner because she claimed blood right." Snape began to speak, but the older wizard spoke on.

"We're in the 'taking out the garbage' phase of this whole sorry business. Here in Europe y'all have a prison guarded by soul sucking demons and I find that mighty repellent, probably at least as much as you find our that ways don't set right with you. We don't have an Azkaban in our neck of the woods and we don't want one either because we can't be bothered with warehousing our garbage. If folks can't refrain from being a blight on humanity they get fined, nullified, banished, shit kicked out of them, or executed depending on how rank they were and what mood we're in that day. Death is pretty much the only punishment that fits the bill in this case. If that bastard is caught, Sis is going to kill him and it won't be an easy death either, and that's also part of our law. Still want to come along? Do you really want to come along to see Sis kill her own brother? I sincerely doubt that she wants you to watch."

"And no one else could carry out the sentence? You're going to make her do it?" Snape's eyes smoldered as he glared at Caleb.

"That's another area where you don't understand the ways we operate. We don't have unforgivable curses. We barely have laws. Our community is very lightly governed, in most cases self-governed by the locals. In what you would call civil matters we encourage the families to work it out among themselves-these things rarely come to the knights. In criminal matters the families most often deal with their own renegades as well, sometimes with the help of other families, particularly if they've been affected. The knights usually only step in if there has been what we feel ought to be a capital crime or if there's a threat that concerns the entire community. And even if we do step in the family still has the right to impose the sentence if they're capable of doing so. It's more than that, it's a tradition that the family executes their criminals. I don't expect you to agree with it or for it to make much sense to you, but that's how it is."

"Now, beyond it being a generally bad idea for you to tag along with us, there is a specific problem with what we'd do with you if you came along. I can't send you with Ruby because he's in charge and won't have time to watch out for you, and you surely will need to be watched out for because you don't know how we work, and that could get you or one of the crew hurt or worse. Another thing that you're probably not aware of is that I am not anyone's boss. I hold no authority to tell a single wizard out there what to do. It's their choice to be in my clan, their choice to go on any mission or not, and their choice whether they want to follow my instructions or not. Now this whole business must sound mighty disorganized to someone who lives in a place where they police underage magic and regulate flying carpets, of all things, but this is what works for us. Ruby and Sis have to work as a pair on this. It's too dangerous for them to take you along and try to explain things as they go, and I'm not going to strong arm anyone else into taking you along."

Caleb waited for the reaction, expecting an argument. Instead, Snape rose and walked to the window, staring out at the people beginning to assemble on the lawn. Reuben was weaving in and out of the small group, talking briefly with each one. Snape's shoulders sagged in disappointment, standing silently in the overcast light streaming into the room.

_He's turned away so I can't see how he feels_, Caleb mused, yet with an empath's instincts he knew without seeing Snape's face how rejected he felt. _It's important to him to go along. As much as he acts like he doesn't need to fit in, he doesn't want to be left out._ The older wizard considered his options for a moment. _I'm probably making a mistake_, he thought, _but it won't be the first one. _"Come back, Severus, and sit. There might be something I can do. Let's finish these vile so-called beers."

Snape lowered himself back into the chair and Caleb took another sip from his glass. "Son, if I were to give the OK for you to go along, what are you good at? I'm going to have to try to find a place that we might be able to fit you in."

"I'm a potions master." _Hopefully, they can use an_other, Snape thought.

"Excellent, a very useful skill." Caleb sighed. "Unfortunately, it's not one we're likely to need on this trip. What else can you do well?"

"Advanced curses, concealments…."

"Excellent again, but because you don't know our methods I can't put you near where the action is likely to be." Caleb thought for a moment. "Concealments….have you every done forensics?"

"I've heard of it in the mug… nil sense of the word, and if that is what you're speaking of, no. I can use a microscope and lab equipment, but I have no experience in forensics." Snape stiffened slightly-this was not going as he had hoped.

"Our 'forensics' is a bit different than the nil variety. We backtrack spells and search for clues not only in physical evidence but magical evidence. The forensic team is also in charge of curse breaking, since they're the ones dealing with finding out what is there in the first place."

"I do have experience in curse breaking."

Caleb rose and when Snape began to stand he gestured for him to remain. "Give me a few minutes to get together with the guy doing the forensics and see if I can't talk him into taking you along. I can't promise anything, but I'll give it a shot."

Once alone, Snape rose and walked to the window. He could see people begin to gather around and mill about as if ready to depart. Caleb approached Reuben and they spoke for a moment. Reuben called another man over; a tall husky man with dark hair. Soon the three called a house elf over, Hoople from the look of it though Snape really couldn't be certain at the distance. Now Caleb and the unfamiliar wizard were walking toward the entrance.

"Snape, Jules, you both know which one you aren't." Caleb gestured at the table and all three sat. "As I was telling you outside, Jules, he wants to come along and if he does he'll need to buddy up with someone because he doesn't know how we work." He turned to Snape. "If you do go with Jules, you'll have to follow his instructions exactly. It doesn't matter how good you are at what you do here, we work in a particular way so that we're aware of what each other is doing and if you disrupted our hunt you could get all of us killed. There are no loopholes here-if you go with him then what he says goes. It's too dangerous to the entire crew to have it otherwise." Snape nodded, not pleased with the terms upon him but surprised that he was even being allowed along.

Jules spoke next, with an accent similar to Reuben's, one he had learned came from the Southeastern United States. "Caleb said you've done some curse breaking." Snape nodded. "We have a good supply of tools on hand for more advanced stuff and realistically we probably won't need them, but you are going to need a peach tree wand for backtracking and possibly spell dissection. I sent the little elf that was here a minute ago to get your bags packed and Reuben is transfiguring clothes for you so you'll have something suitable for the kind of dirty mess that we're likely to be in for. You'll need to see Sis about the wand and either change clothes or get someone to transfigure yours. It's brass monkey weather where we're headed." He turned his head at the sound of someone calling his name, then quickly rose and walked away. He brushed past Deborah, who entered as he left the room. She stood behind the chair Jules had vacated and tossed a dozen or so of the ugliest wands Snape had even seen before him along with a small dull grey rock. "Start working through those wands on this rock and see if you find one that will suit you," she said abruptly.

"Exactly what sort of reveal charm am I supposed to be doing with them?" he asked, his voice taking on an irate tone.

She did not reply, but rose and walked to the window. "Jules! Get your ass back here! This is your project, Snape needs to pick a wand." She slammed the window and walked out of the room, her footfalls a bit louder than usual, he observed.

"I think we both rose to the very apex of her shit list," Jules remarked mildly as he returned. "Oh well, she'll be mad 'till she's glad." He gathered the wands together into a pile. "Or 'till she decides to kill us. Snape, what do you know about divination?"

"If you're asking if I know how to foretell the future, I know how it's supposedly done and I can't do it." He felt a sinking feeling. Not once had he ever shown a shred of predictive talent.

Jules rolled his eyes. "I can't either, and between you and me I think that's mainly a load of bullshit. I'm talking about a different sort of divination. The kind we will be doing is more of a means of searching for traces of magical energy or of events that have occurred in an area. It's not about the future, it's about the past and that is what we need a peach tree wand for. A regular wand is not sensitive enough to pick up those types of traces. The trick is finding which wand is going to do that best for you. That is what this rock is about. Reuben did something or another with it and now you get to try to figure out what it was. There is no incantation, not even a non-verbal one-that would be too strong. Peach wood is a very sensitive material, so sensitive that some nils can even use it for what they call 'water witching.' The problem with the sensitivity is that it can pick up all sorts of extraneous information, like insect movement, for instance. The easiest way around that is to try a bunch of wands and see which one works best for you."

A few moments later, having found a usable wand and determined that the stone came from a badger sett, Snape joined the small assembly on the lawn. Jules made brief introductions and Reuben handed him a duffle bag similar to the others that lay around, then a bottle of the familiar anti nausea potion. "It's going to be a long bumpy ride. Take extra, you won't endear yourself to your fellow travelers if you start puking inside the string." He dropped his voice a little lower. "You might want to try to make peace with your woman. She's right-it's not a good idea for you to be going along. She's worried about you getting hurt, that's why she's so pissed off."

Snape shrugged then carried his load over to where Deborah was standing with her own bags. "Are you still angry with me?" he asked.

She frowned and did not meet his eyes. "Yes, I am. I have no problem in taking you along with me when the we aren't chasing down a sociopath. I wouldn't have a problem with your coming along today if you were already familiar with how we work. This is just a bad idea.' She finally turned toward him and he could see that she was troubled even more than she was angry. "Our lifestyles are way different than what you're accustomed to." Snape snorted and she raised a hand to cut off the retort that was surely coming. "You're going into our world now. You're not going to like some of what you find. I expect for you to not embarrass the crap out of Ruby or me. Remember that you chose to come along when it starts getting unpleasant for you."

She turned and rapidly walked over to where Caleb was pulling up a very large string. "Dudes!" Reuben shouted. "Quit jerking around. It's time for business. All aboard." Snape took a last long draught of his potion, adjusted the shoulder strap of his duffle, and strode into the maw of the pulsating tunnel.


	35. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

When they left it had been sunny and cool, a crisp bright late autumn morning. Snape stumbled into near darkness and rain with only a faint glow of pale yellow on the horizon foretelling sunrise. Holding back from vomiting during the many moments in the string had been a struggle. Reuben hurried him into a nearby barn, one that still smelled of cattle. A pair of wizards were waiting inside and Reuben and Caleb immediately went to speak with them. Snape recognized Victor Black but not the woman. He followed the rest of the new arrivals over to where they were stashing their duffle bags in a long unused stall. The tall rawboned woman they called 'Tinkerbelle' set a protective charm of concealment over their belongings.

"Snape, you're going to have to dress for the weather better than that if you're planning on coming with us," Jules said, walking up to him. Snape silently agreed, not bothering to change clothes before they left had been a mistake. Already he was soaked to the skin. Deborah stepped up and worked a drying charm on him and at least he was a bit warmer. She beckoned him toward a ladder up to the loft. He followed without comment-he was thankful that she no longer seemed angry and it was obvious he wouldn't last the day in the rain dressed as he was.

A few moments later he backed down the ladder in his transfigured garb. The rubber soled boots, long johns, heavy duck pants and jacket and flannel shirt all seemed odd and bulky to him, but at least he was warm. Deborah stood back and grinned at the sight of him. "Dude, you could pass for a hilljack!" Snape glared and from somewhere behind him he recognized the sound of Reuben's guffaw. He flexed his fingers and noticed how stiffly the fur lined leather gloves moved. Caleb strolled over and handed him a heavy knit cap. "Best cover your head, son, or you'll freeze out there." Snape pulled the hat on and felt a nudge at his elbow. Jules handed him a heavy scarf. He mumbled his thanks, embarrassed that he had come so ill prepared from the start. Yet no one seemed to think badly of him. They were more interested in getting out and scouting around. A basilisk nosed it's handler's leg, restless and eager to be on it's way, squeaking impatiently. Tinkerbelle produced a large insulated thermos and passed steaming styrofoam cups around. Jules took a cup, dumped a handful of something in it, then passed it to him. Snape sniffed his then took a sip-hot chocolate with marshmallows. It seemed bizarre to be drinking hot chocolate at the start of a manhunt. He tugged at the cap again, pulling it down to cover his ears then flipped up his hood. People were drifting toward the barn door and Jules beaconed to him. He finished the hot chocolate with a gulp, vanished the cup as he had observed the others to do, then joined the queue drifting out into the cold rain.

* * *

><p>They had walked for nearly half an hour before they reached the crest of the ridge. The sun hung veiled behind the grey clouds and through a constant cold drizzle Snape could see the barn they had come from in the narrow valley below him. On the opposite side of a narrow stream sat a white clapboard house, but no smoke emanated from the chimney despite it's well-kept lived in appearance. The narrow fields had been mowed and red and white cattle were feeding from large round bales of hay scattered about.<p>

Jules called to him and Snape walked over. "They're going to let the basilisks slip in a few minutes. Right now is when our job starts. We're going to use divination to try to find a good direction to search. You'll need your peach tree wand."

Snape pulled the ugly thing out of his sleeve and marveled that such a thing could even be termed a "wand." There was no signs that it held a core. It looked as if it had been snapped from a tree and sharpened at one end and whittled blunt at the other. The bark wasn't even peeled away. The only thing that made it look as if someone had intended it for something other than a kebob stick was a series of curious lines scribed along the length of the wand. He gave it a disdainful glance.

Jules caught his expression and grinned. "That is a bit of ancient technology, one of the first sorts of wands. No core, no finish, nothing but a few scratches to help direct energy flow. It's the reverse of what wands are today. It doesn't send out and amplify, it collects. I've seen nils use something even more primitive to hunt for water. They call it 'water witching.' Some of them are good enough that they just break a branch off of a tree and find water."

"If you two don't mind saving that fascinating conversation for another time, there are damn near a dozen people waiting for our forensic team to let us know where to start searching." Caleb and the rest of the crew stood watching. "I'm going to give it about one more cigarette of time before I fire y'all and promote the basilisks." He lit up a cigarette and Snape noticed that most of the team did the same. It still struck him as so odd. Hardly any of the wizards he knew would confess to having such a Muggle sort of habit, let alone practice it openly.

Jules held the peach tree wand pointed straight up over his head. He stood motionless for a moment, seeming to be lost in thought. Then his expression changed to one of extreme loathing. Snape could see the wand begin to jerk in his hand. Jules let go of the wand and it fell to the ground. "Fuck," he said in a low gasp. His eyes were tightly closed in an expression of disgust. "Another one." He turned back toward Caleb and Reuben. "Maybe worse than the last. Give me a few minutes and I'll try to find out more." He leaned over, hands on his knees, and breathed heavily for a moment. "Snape, you try it. Don't over think it or look for specifics. Think of searching for anything that pertains to the case and let the wand tell you what it can. Searches like the one we're on are rather ugly and you start to experience anything too intense, drop the wand."

Snape suspected that he looked extremely foolish holding the pointed stick up over his head, and for the first few seconds he could hear the murmur of conversation coming from the group. He turned away and pushed the sound of the others out of his mind, allowing himself to focus upon being receptive to whatever the wand might pick up. He didn't notice when the conversation stopped, when he had turned back and the group watched his face go pale and his eyes widen. He found himself in utter darkness, lying on the ground, with the sharp edges of small stones biting into his skin. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, a buzzing sound, and an odor he could almost taste, an odor of rot. He was dizzy and faint, but fear gave him the strength to try to twist away the approaching sound of heavy footsteps Snape could turn only a few inches before he was stopped. His arms were tied behind his back. He struggled to break free and heard a man's crude laughter, salacious and mocking. A doorway opened above him and a man was silhoutetted against a bright summer sky. Behind him a clump of dead trees reached toward the sky, their branches bleached grey and spread like ghostly fingers. Snape stumbled a few steps in the darkness then fell as the man grabbed his hair and pulled him back onto the ground. He tried to kick free in vain. And then he felt rough hands began to caress his body. A hand tightened on his throat and he could no longer hold back a scream.

Someone began tugging at his arm and taking his peach tree wand and there were shouts and many voices talking at once. He slumped then fell over onto his hands and knees, gasping and shaking. Terror, anger, shame, disgust, and some feelings he could scarcely identify swept over him. He swallowed hard and felt his mouth water and a bitter salty taste at the back of his tongue. He could hear Reuben calling the rest of the search team back around a bend in the road. At least he was to be spared at least a part of the humiliation of losing control.

When he was finished vomiting, Caleb and Deborah helped him to his feet. He tried to will himself to stop shivering, he had shown weakness enough and they were not yet an hour out into the hunt. Jules handed him a canteen and he was grateful to at least be able to rinse his mouth out and spit away the taste of sickness. Snape stood swaying, fighting the nausea, colder than he had ever felt in life.

"Do you think he's OK to apparate back to the house?" Deborah asked Caleb.

"We can't leave him out here like this. Reuben!" he cried, turning sharply. Reuben came trotting around the bend in the road. "Snape's out for the day. Sis and I are taking him back to the house. You and Jules can take it from here."

"Wait!" Snape's voice was weak and raspy. He caught Reuben's eyes. "I saw a copse of dead trees, tall spreading ones, several together. Look under the trees! It's close, over that hill!" He waved at a ridge beyond the one they stood upon. "Big spreading dead trees in a place that looks burned out, you're going to find it there!" He started to cough but didn't drop his stare. Reuben nodded, then Snape began to cough violently.

"The rest of us will check it out and get back to you." Reuben called back. He turned and in a moment was out of their sight.

Snape felt each wizard hook an arm under one of his then he was pulled along as they apparated. He bent coughing and retching at the doorway as Caleb performed the unlocking charm, grateful that there seemed to be nothing left for him to vomit. They pulled him up the few steps and into the house then walked him across a rough board floor and plopped him onto a couch. He heard a fireplace roar into life from an igniting spell and he could feel a drying spell working on him. Caleb went off into another room and the sounds of glassware rattling came through the doorway. He felt a blast of hot air as a drying spell pushed over him and from the corner of his eye he saw Deborah walking through a doorway holding her wand.

He simply could not quit shivering. Caleb came from a room at his left, which Snape surmised was a kitchen from the smell of tea brewing. After taking a seat in a raggedy easy chair across from him, he offered him a cup of tea heavily spiked with the nausea potion, Snape noted after the aroma reached him. He did not want to be treated like a weakling. "I'm fine," he murmured and waved it away.

"Of course you're fine, son. When I see someone who's gone fish gut gray and shaking like a dog shitting peach pits the very first thing I think is they must be feeling perfectly splendid, finer than frog hair." He thrust the cup at Snape, who grasped it by reflex. "Drink the goddamn potion," he said gruffly. "I've vanished enough puke for one day." His tone left no room for disagreement.

Snape's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he carefully sipped. His nausea and fear were subsiding, being slowly displaced by a sense of mortification at how he had reacted to the search. He closed his eyes, but snapped them open quickly-closing them brought on flashbacks to the terror he experienced in the darkness. He stared down dully, noting in a rather clinical manner that a large splat of vomit was beginning to congeal on the toe of his right shoe.

"Snape, what in the blue blazes happened to you out there?"

Snape continued to focus on the toe of his right shoe. He had no clue as to what had happened. The piece of crap wand that he felt wouldn't be of much use had somehow turned upon him and dealt him one of the most frightening and horrible experiences of his life. He couldn't put what he had seen and felt into words. He shook his head slowly, tried to speak, and the words would not come. He kept getting flashes of memories of his past and flashes of something else. _Hallucinations_? he wondered. Some of what he was experiencing clearly did not spring from memories of his own. He tried to speak and choked, the words would not come.

"Caleb," she said softly and evenly, "can you let him get cleaned up and changed first?"

Caleb considered the dark thin wizard sitting slumped over on the couch. He was obviously still deeply shaken by whatever he had experienced up on the ridge. "Of course," he replied quietly. "I'll pop out to the barn for his things. Which duffle is it?"

"It's a brand new one, the only new one out there."

"Gotcha. I'm going to check in up on the hill and see what they're up to first then get his bag. I'll be back in a few minutes." He rose then walked over. Much to Snape's astonishment, Caleb sat next to him and put an arm across his shoulders. He couldn't speak, he realized what a sorry sight he must be, and not merely a sorry sight but reeking of vomit as well. He turned his head away, not wanting to see the look of disgust on the other man's face. "It's going to be alright, son." Yet another indescribable moment. His father had never called him 'son,' only 'boy.' He had certainly never sought to hold him and comfort him in his misery. _Most of which he had personally created_, Snape thought, a small spark of black humor breaking into his current nightmare.

"Son, do you hear me?" Caleb was speaking again. "You get yourself situated and then we'll talk. I'm not sure what happened out there but we'll figure it out and get it set right. Jules and my least' un are good at working things out. Don't let this grieve you, we'll take care of it."

Caleb left and Deborah moved over to the place he had vacated. He allowed himself to be held and for once she was blessedly silent, he thought, letting her presence and the warmth of her body bring him a comfort that her endless assurances and chatter often did not. It felt so good, after the confusing terror, to have a few moments of calm.

After a while, he spoke. "What is a least'un?" His voice was soft and weary, but he was thankful to have some control of it back.

She laughed softly, of course he wouldn't have known. "A least'un is a last born child. The least one. It doesn't mean that they're not as good as another, like it does in some places. It means that they're the smallest one. It's a way of saying my youngest kid. That's how folks talk where we're from."

"Oh." He wasn't ready for a drawn out conversation about where she hailed from. He had been in America for what he estimated to be less than three hours and it had been a hellish experience. And he could barely stand himself now, the odor of sickness was being joined by that of the damp sour sweat of fear. "Deb, is there a shower here I could use?"

"No, no shower. There's a tub and I started the water heating when we came in." He raised his head and arched an eyebrow. "This house is an old one. Come on in and you'll see what I mean." She beckoned then walked off into a room off to his right. After a moment he followed.

* * *

><p>He lay back in the huge old enameled iron bathtub and enjoyed the feeling of finally being warm again. He had been shocked at how primitive the bathing facilities really were. Deborah had used a hand pump to partially fill the tub ("We can't use charms or other spells in this part of the house, the electricity is unshielded. The most we can get away with here is potions.") The reason for her ducking inside the room when they arrived became apparent when she lifted a huge steaming kettle off of a wood fired stove and poured it into the cold water she had pumped. She tested it then refilled the kettle and brought another from the stove. It had taken half of another battered vessel to make the fine adjustments but when Snape slipped into the warm water it had brought a sigh of relief. Deborah had thrown some sort of muggle superstitious garbage-Epsom salts-into the water before she left the room, and while he doubted that it had any healing properties it made the water feel almost silky. For whatever reason, he had stopped shaking 'like a dog shitting peach pits,' now that was an interesting image, he mused. He reluctantly stood and stepped out of the comforting tub.<p>

The coarse feel of the towel against his skin brought back old memories of line-dried towels, stiff as a board, just like when his mother washed their things by hand. Which was quite seldom, he recalled. Usually the clothes and towels of his childhood were sour, damp, and filthy. As worn as these towels were, even darned in places, they smelled sweet and clean. He swiftly banished the unwelcome memory from his mind and tossed a towel on a wooden chair then sat and opened his duffle.

He felt a swell of gratitude to Reuben for packing him the chambray shirt, the warm forest green sweater and broken in jeans, a swell of gratitude that lasted only until he lifted the soft old jeans and found the pale pink y-fronts and floral t-shirt. Lifting them to see if there were normal clothes beneath, he found a frilly peach satin nightshirt. His face twisted into a grim smile. Reuben would pay for this in spades, but later when he was not expecting it. He dressed quickly then stood in front of a chipped frameless mirror with worn silvering and made certain that no bits of the pink flowered undershirt were peeping out from under his clothing.

A glance around the room was both revealing and perplexing at once. The room spoke of poverty and frugality. The rug beside the tub was hand braided from rags. The kettles on the stove were dented and showed the signs of several repairs. The walls were whitewashed rough boards. The floor itself again reminded him of his youth, what they called a linoleum rug, not even cut to fit the room but ordered as a piece, the cheapest kind of floor covering one could buy fifty years or more ago. The garish floral patterns were worn and cracked yet clean. The knights had freely used this house and Deborah and Caleb both seemed familiar with it, but how? He knew that she was wealthy, perhaps it was Caleb's. He would have much rather stayed inside and pondered that question, but he could hear activity from the other room, it was time to face the rest of them. He rubbed at his temples. In the insane vernacular of Deb and Ruby, he felt that he had surely screwed the pooch. He had foolishly entertained thoughts of what it would be like to meet people who didn't know him as a death eater, or as a hated pedagogue, people who might accept him as merely another wizard who came from a different country. He pulled on his socks and slid his feet into a pair of Reeboks then reluctantly walked through the doorway and out into the crowded noisy room.

Having steeled himself for smirks and whispers, he was shocked when he had walked into sympathy and concern. Deborah and Jules moved apart on the couch, pushing over the other occupants to make a space for him. Old bentwood chairs had been brought from another room to provide seating for the group. Snape took his place opposite Reuben and Caleb, seated in threadbare stuffed chairs.

"Any better?" Reuben asked. Snape nodded. "You had us going for a minute there. We thought you were going to turn into a newt or something." There were low chuckles. Snape knew the routine.

"So did I, but I got better." The faintest trace of a grin appeared on his face. He glanced around and saw no disapproval, no hint of disgust. Monty Python to the rescue. He savored the odd feeling of acceptance, of being wanted.

Caleb leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "They searched up under the dead trees. We found what you sent us to find." He watched intently and caught the faint look of anguish that played over Snape's features for an instant before being carefully masked. "This isn't the place to talk things over. As I study on it, I believe that being so close to that mess is working on you. Do you feel well enough to travel in a string?"

_Not really_, he thought, feeling a tiny hint of nausea return. But he was also beginning to suspect that his proximity to the horror he had briefly glimpsed was affecting him badly. He nodded. "I'll give it a shot," he replied with a forced grin. "Where are we going?"

"Not so far as the last time. We're going to my home in Colorado. The rest of us will go on ahead, and Sis can bring you. The fewer people traveling in a string, the less pronounced the effect is. My wife is getting things together for us. Alright, you idiots!" Caleb shouted at the others. "Get your asses in gear. Out front, we're leaving now and you can light up when we get there." He stood as the rest filed out then turned back to Snape and Deborah. "We'll expect you two in about half an hour. That will give the potion time to work. There's plenty in the kitchen cupboard." He walked out the door and a few seconds later a flash from the window announced that the others had gone on.


	36. Chapter 36

Chapter 36

They were alone.

Deborah picked up a pair of the bentwood chairs and carried them off. Snape did likewise, following her into a room that looked eerily like their kitchen at home. A nearly identical round wooden table stood in the middle. The room was much smaller but the resemblance was evident. The curtains were the same-hand crocheted lace. The stove was wood fired, unlike the gas one in the other kitchen, but the placement and orientation were the same.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"It was my great great grandfather's home. The original walls have been boarded over inside and out, but it was a log house with mud chinking. Mud from that creek outside," she continued as she inclined her head toward the window. "We think it was built right around 1830, but Reuben can't remember the exact year." She went to the stove, poured two cups of tea from an earthenware teapot spider webbed with crazing, and liberally spiked one cup with the nausea potion before setting it in front of Snape. "Don't give me one of those looks. You need it."

_Yes, I do_, he thought, _but that doesn't mean that I am fond of needing it. The last time I was this sick_…..he let his mind wander back…_was in my fifth year_, _when Avery introduced me to drinking games. _In spite of remembering how wretched that experience had been, he smiled. It was good to have felt like part of the group, even though he was to later understand that they had been a group of teenage fools destined for ruin they coudn't have fathomed. However, there were more pressing things to do than to rehash old memories, he thought. He had only a few moments alone with Deborah before they had to move on to Caleb's place.

"Deb, what happened to me out there?"

She shook her head and sighed. "I can't tell you. I honestly don't know exactly what happened."

_Which, coming from you, means that you probably have a very good idea of what it might have been but you don't want to say_, he thought. _Because you feel like you have to constantly protect me and also because you can't stand to be wrong. Not ever once. _He bit his lower lip in frustration, holding back from shouting at her to please, for once, to just tell him what she thought. That would not work. He decided that he would take the direct approach, but without his usual blunt methodology.

"Deb. We only have a few minutes to talk privately. I need to know what you think might have happened. Even if it's only a guess, I need to know."

She closed her eyes for a moment, then met his. "What I think happened should not even be possible. You're not from this part of the world. The genetic mutation for an empath is incredibly rare outside of the United States. But since you asked, here is what it looked like to me. It looked as if you are an empath, not purely a legilimens. An empath is far more affected by what they experience than a legilimens and we have to train to be able to block our reading or cut it off quickly because of it. You looked as an empath does when they hit onto something terrible and can't break loose. Remember when Jules dropped the wand? That was him breaking away. He would never have given you a try at it if he thought you were actually an empath, and untrained in blocking to boot. He figured that at most you could catch some sense of direction and feel like you were doing something important. You should not have been able to pick up any more than that. Your father was a nil and your mother was an old line British witch-empaths don't come out of either."

He nodded; except for the fact that he couldn't be an empath it made a great deal of sense. "Could you pick up on any of it?"

She shook her head. "Not then. We've been blocking each other most of the time and it's a habit for me not to even try. By the time I thought to even see if you weren't blocked, it was mostly over. That's the funny thing about a bunch of empaths-funny weird not funny ha ha. They're nearly constantly on full block so that they don't drive each other crazy." She paused for a moment. "I can get a little of it from you now, even through the blocks. There's more, and I don't know if you want to hear it because it's even more unlikely."

"Yes, I do want to hear it all."

"When they went up over the hill, they found the trees you described, there had been a lightening strike a year or so ago that burned out before it did much harm. There is an old cave under the trees, one my family has known about for years." She drank the rest of her tea and looked off into the distance. "Wayne used that cave for another of his torture chambers. That is what you picked up on. But you didn't only pick up on the fact that it was there, you picked up on what at least one of those victims experienced, didn't you?"

Feeling a horrible lurch in his stomach, Snape nodded. He hoped that she didn't realize how precisely the experience had come through.

"That is what makes it all so incredible. You couldn't possibly carry the gene to be an empath, and yet not only did you function as one, but as a very rare type of empath. A necromancer."

"I didn't go out and call up the dead, Deb." Snape said in disgust. "I was doing what Jules said to do, casting for any sort of clue."

"That's not what I'm talking about. When you're talking about empaths, a necromancer is someone who can read the emotions and experiences of someone who has died. Technically all empaths can do that but it's very rare that someone can do it to the extent that it appeared to happen out there with you. That's why I think that my gut feeling is probably wrong on this. Jules and Least'un ought to be able to figure out what is going on. Anyway, as soon as you're ready we should head on out. The others will be waiting for us and I don't want them to send a search party back to see if we're OK."

Snape nodded. They went into the main room and he was pleased to find his black leather coat hanging in near the front door. Deborah followed his glance. "I brought that along in case you needed it. Reuben said he'd pack some casual stuff in case we went out but he didn't have room in your bag for it." Snape frowned for a moment thinking about exactly what Reuben had packed for him. But there was really nothing he could do about that. Perhaps he could talk Deborah into transfiguring the his underwear back to their original state, he wasn't the best at common household magic as he had never seen a need to learn a charm to do what a house elf could readily accomplish for him. He followed her onto the lawn then pulled up a string for them, a charm he had recently added to his repertoire. They stepped in and linked arms as the movement started. And then the string twinkled out and opened in a different place.

* * *

><p>The first thing he noticed was how light and clear the day was. The air felt cold and crisp, scented with pine. Unfamiliar birdsong rang through the trees. A fat squirrel ran almost to his feet and when no food was forthcoming, barked and ran away.<p>

The dark ground was dappled with patches of bright snow. "Come on, the house is over here," Deborah said. He turned and was startled by the sheer size of the rustic log dwelling. It made Snape think of how a castle might look if it were constructed of hewn wood. "Let's get inside, it's freezing out here." He supposed that it was, but the view of the pines and the wispy clouds set high in the bright sky was one he was reluctant to lose.

There was no foyer in this house, the door opened directly into a great room. They added their coats to the row hanging on the wall. A long wooden table sat before a bank of windows at one end of the room. The knights, however, were clustered in sofas and chairs or sitting on the floor in front of the television on the other.

"There's no fucking way that was holding!" someone shrieked as boos and hisses erupted and an empty cigarette pack hit the screen.

"Son of a bitch, the referee needs a seeing eye dog! Get him a white cane!" another voice chimed in.

"It can get a little heated during football games," Deborah remarked casually. "Let's head upstairs for a while. I know where our room is, and someone will let us know when we're needed." She headed into what looked like a closet and opened a door, revealing the elevator Snape had even seen in a private home. As soon as the sliding doors shut, she turned and pulled him into a long kiss. "It's a tradition." They stepped out into the third floor hallway, lit from above by skylights.

He stepped into their room and saw that the duffle bags had already been placed near the doorway. "The bed is through there, bathroom to the right," she said, pointing to a doorway." The bath had calmed and refreshed him, but Snape was weary. _If I can only lie down for a few minutes, I'll be fine, he thought to himself. _ Without even glancing at the rest of the room threw himself onto the bed and curled onto his side.

He felt the bed shift as Deborah sat at the foot and pulled off his shoes. Again the bed swayed as she rose and a then he felt a quilt being spread over him. He closed his eyes. _I'll only rest here for a few minutes, then I'll get up_, he thought. Within seconds he was fast asleep.

* * *

><p><em>He trotted through the streets of Cokeworth. He was cold and damp as usual and his bare legs were grimed from the muddy road, but this had been a good day. He had managed to filch a meat pie when a stall owner's back was turned and he had that rare feeling of satisfaction that came from not being hungry. He had consumed his stolen treasure while squatted behind a large metal bin, shielded from the worst of the wind. He licked the greasy crumbs from his fingers then reluctantly started for home.<em>

_He moved on steadily as night edged closer, a ragged shadow darting unnoticed past people walking on the grey pavement. At the corner he turned onto Spinner's End and paused. He fixed his gaze upon the house at the very end and watched warily. _

_The light was on in the front room. He was in luck. If luck stayed with him they would already be drunk, too drunk to take notice of his arrival. He cut around the house and slipped in through the back door. He could not remember a time when the lock was not broken. In his eight years it had always been so._

_He kept to the darkness of the kitchen and peered out into what his mother laughably called a parlor. It was a dark room with it's corners heaped with clutter and dirty clothing, a room that stank greatly of cheap alcohol and mustiness, but beneath that stink there was a subtle reek of stale urine and unwashed bodies. Unwashed bodies like his own. They seemed to be sleeping, passed out, he thought. He crept toward the stairs._

_He nearly made it upstairs undetected. An unseen shoe that had been thrown on the staircase tripped him and the sound of his fall betrayed him. "Where the hell have you been, boy? Answer me, BOY!" Snape's lips drew thin in a frightened grimace. He searched for a way out. Running upstairs was pointless-the window he had once crawled out to shinny down the drain pipe was nailed shut, the upstairs was a trap. His drunken father stood at the foot of the stairs gasping, catching his breath before taking up the chase._

_There was a small chance of slipping past him, Snape calculated. His father was large and powerful, but he was also slow and clumsy and quite drunk. He watched until the man started up the steps then launched himself at the narrow space between his legs and the banister. It nearly worked, but as he broke free, he fell down the last few steps. The lash of a thick heavy belt between his shoulder blades knocked the breath out of him and bore him to the ground. It fell again and again, raising red welts across his back, his bare legs, his skinny buttocks. Driven by pain he scrabbled up and stumbled blindly, only to run into a corner. He turned to face the man, who stood with the belt swinging in hand._

"_So, you think you can saunter in here any old time you please, do you?" the man gasped, winded from the exertion of wielding the belt. "While you live under my room you'll come home when you're told to, you ungrateful little bastard!" He lumbered forward. Snape broke to run past him, but his father caught a handful of his hair, jerking his head back so quickly he felt that his neck would snap. The man began pulling at his clothes. "Let's see how much you feel like ignoring my rules after I beat your bare ass bloody!" Snape screamed and writhed in terror…_

_Then it happened. Something swelled and grew in him, something deep within his chest, something he didn't understand, and he felt it go out from him in a dangerous surge. His father fell to his knees and clawed at his eyes. "God damn you, you little cocksucker, you've blinded me!" he howled. "You've cursed your own father, you little prick! When I get my hands on you, you'll wish.."_

_But Snape was not dull enough to wait around to hear about what he would be wishing for from the roaring drunk. He flew past where his mother had passed out on a sofa, out the front door, and tore through the back alleys, running furiously in the twilight. At last he reached the derelict house he knew too well. With a practice leap he pulled himself through a window, climbed the stairs, and ran into the dusty bedroom. A filthy mattress strewn with torn and stained blankets lay in the farthest corner. He slid under the blankets, pulled himself up into a ball, shivering until he fell into a restless sleep._

* * *

><p>Periodically one of the four would get up from the table and walk over to the doorway. Snape tossed and jerked and at times cried out softly. "Are you picking up on what he's dreaming?" Caleb asked in a low voice.<p>

"I can barely block him out," the man known as 'Least'un' said. "I've gotten the jist of it even with my blocks up." He turned to Deborah. "Haven't you?" She nodded. "No way for you to prevent it, it's strong and you two have a connection. Jules," he said, looking up at the man on his other side, "Are you getting anything?"

"Yeah, it's coming in pieces." He turned to Caleb. "What about you?"

"I'm real handy at blocks so I'm not getting much, but what I'm getting is mighty damn awful. It ain't about what happened today, either."

At that moment, a loud moan from the other room interrupted and Least'un and Deborah walked rapidly to the doorway.

Snape was huddled, knees drawn up as if to protect himself. "You're going to need to wake him, Sis," the sandy haired man said softly. "I'll try to help him with this if he's willing. Take your time. I'll be downstairs with the rest of them. We ought to at least get him up and moving and get some food in him before I start explaining what has happened."

When the others had left and she heard the door close behind them, she went to him. He had pulled off the quilt rolled up into a ball, clutching it tightly. She sat next to him on the bed. Snape wasn't difficult to wake up, she had discovered. What took some finesse was waking him up without having him nearly jump out of his skin. She lay a hand lightly on his shoulder, resting it until she felt him begin to lean back into it, seeking warmth even in his sleep. She began to rub his back, lightly at first and then more firmly as he started shifting to meet her touch. After a few moments his eyes blinked open and he spoke in a quiet tone. "I'm awake."

She lay on the narrow strip of mattress behind his back and draped an arm over his chest. He took her hand in his. She could see him taking in the lay of the room, the furnishings, and the dark sky outside. "What time is it?" he asked, his voice still dusky from sleep.

"Six-thirty in the evening. Time for us to get moving. Supper is at seven, and we're expected down there."

He closed his eyes. "I don't really feel like eating. You go on down, and I'll stay up here. I don't think my stomach could handle food right now." It was a lie. Even after being sick earlier he was hungry to the point of feeling a bit lightheaded, but Snape did not feel ready to face the others, not after what had happened.

"That is not true, and we both know it." She stroked his hair. "You're embarrassed about what happened earlier, and there's not a person down there who hasn't gotten sick on a search. It's so commonplace that when we get down to really having to dig, we have a designated vomit area." Snape twisted to give her a skeptical look. "It's true. You aren't at all special that way. Also, Least'un came to see you. He's going to try to figure out what happened to you out there and see if he can show you ways to stop it from happening again."

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. She knew this game and was heartened to see that he was up to playing. She put his shoes on and pulled him up to a sitting position even as he pretended not to be awake. She started tickling his ribs, and halfway up he couldn't stop himself and jumped up. "Where's the bathroom?" he asked.

"The door on your right. The one on your left is a closet, so don't get them confused." He gave a snort of indignation, opened the closet door, pretended to be confused, then disappeared into the bathroom.

He emerged a short time later smelling of Deborah's 4711 cologne. (Reuben had seen fit to pack him some sort of adolescent female cologne, yes, Reuben would pay for that too, dearly, very dearly.) 4711 wasn't bad, at least it was suitable for men too, and a whore's shower with cologne was all he had time for. His concerns that the clothes he was in might not be formal enough vanished when he glimpsed the ever elegant Deborah, clad in jeans long ready for the rag barrel and an originally white shirt which proclaimed 'Welcome to the Chicken Ranch, How May I Help You?' Perhaps Deborah's family raises chickens along with their other businesses. No, he surmised, it's something that I don't understand, something that the rest of them would find hilarious. I suppose I'll find out what it is eventually. As they left the room he could smell tantalizing aromas drifting up the staircase.

* * *

><p>He had expected Least'un to be imposing in spite of his name, and was somewhat disappointed when they were introduced. Least'un was a short pudgy man with sandy blond hair and a pleasant round face. Everything about his appearance seemed to be soft and round. Snape's first impression was one of a very mild harmless man. Within a few moments he knew that his impression had been utterly wrong. Least'un quickly began to remind him of a wolf in sheep's clothing. His soft hazel eyes missed nothing. Throughout the meal even when he engaged in the blandest of small talk his gaze was constantly wandering.<p>

The meal had been unlike any other Snape had experienced. He gathered that the knights were keen on wild game because bear, pheasant, venison, and rabbit was served. After the meal various little groups started to form. There was a wizard chess game going, a game of cards, and several were playing Monopoly, one of the few muggle games Snape found entertaining. The pudgy man motioned him to follow and Snape entered into a side room. There was a desk and a few overstuffed chairs. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with heavy leather bound volumes, some of which looked quite ancient. He took a seat in one of the soft chairs and fought to shake off his growing feeling of apprehension.

"It's been a rough day. Anyone would find it most unsettling."

Snape grimaced. He had hoped that it wouldn't be so obvious to him.

He offered back a sympathetic grin. "You're doing an excellent job with your sort of blocking, occlumency if I recall correctly. You have hidden the scope of your discomfort from nearly everyone out there. You are outstanding at it."

Snape turned. "So I've been told. Then again, I've been told that sometimes I practically scream out my private thoughts."

Least'un gave a small smile. "From Deborah, of course, her proximity to you makes it much easier for her to read what is going on with you than it would be for most others." He motioned to a couple of easy chairs that sat opposite each other. "Please, sit. Let's talk."

"Outside of our community, I'm William Grey, and here I go by Least or Least'un. I teach psychology at a nil college and the finer points of empathy at one that is geared to those of our sort. What would you like for me to call you by?"

"Snape. That seems to be what the rest have picked to call me by. Where I come from I am Severus Snape, a potions master and professor at a school for our sort. Unless you would ask my students, who have chosen to add a few choice adjectives, although never to my face."

Least'un chuckled. "I get that too, especially around finals. The good housewife is held in low repute by spiders and flies." He settled into his chair a bit then met Snape's eyes. "What you experienced today on the search should not have been possible but nevertheless it happened. Jules is a reasonably good empath and he felt a sensation of death and agony close by before he broke contact off. On the other hand you experienced it much more acutely." He watched as Snape nodded. "That makes no sense at all and yet it clearly happened. So now what we need to do is identify what went on back there and figure out a way for you to effectively block it in the future. I'll tell you upfront that if you proceed, the process is intense, and I'm picking up that you have concerns about your privacy, particularly where it relates to 'getting inside of your head.' That, incidentally, is what Deborah is speaking of when she says you scream things out. That makes you sound very much like an empath. If we work together I am going to be able to sense many of your thoughts and emotions and it works both ways. At times my relationship with Jules will be evident. I imagine that will make you uncomfortable, but there is no way I'll be totally able to keep that from coming through, nor will you be able to totally block your personal life from me. Will you be able to work with me despite that?

"I can't say that it doesn't make me uncomfortable, but your personal life really doesn't concern me, nor can I see how mine would be of much interest to you." Snape said quietly. "My concern is with what happened out on the ridge today. I do not care to experience anything like that again."

"Right. And we'll figure that out. Now, I need to know what sort of time frame we have to work in. When are you due back at your school?"

"Monday morning. Around midnight Sunday night by your time zone."

Least'un shook his head. "It will never happen. I'm good but I can't pull miracles out of my ass. Let me call Deb and Jules up here and see if they can work something out with your headmaster. I am picking up that you believe that it's a good possibility." He gave sort of a grin. "Watch this, this is where being an empath comes in handy. I'm going to call Jules up here mentally. Works for beer and sandwiches too." He sat back in his chair and waited.

A moment later a knock came. "Did you need us?" Jules asked as he and Deborah walked in.

"Yes. I'd appreciate it if you and Deb would string back to Scotland and see if you can contact Snape's headmaster. Tell him that it's important that I have several days with him to work out a personal matter. The sense I'm getting from Snape is that he'll do his best to accommodate him. If not, Jules and I will be visiting for a bit. Go on, now, it's late over there. You might want to pick up a few clothes, too."

They shut the door and were gone. He turned his attention back to Snape and grinned.

"One of the best things about this ability is that you can make a preemptive strike against nosy questions by just my running the conversation forward quickly."

"Now, you are going to need to know what to expect, so I'll outline the basics that will apply any time that we meet in regard to what has happened. I will describe what I'm going to attempt and why it's important. I will always ask for your permission before I go exploring around inside of your head, as you think of it. At any time if you ask for me to back off or leave, I will. If you ask for my help, I'll give it. If you ask for my opinion, I'll give that too. Today should not be very intense, but it can get that way and will before this is over with. Today I'm only going to try to identify what caused you to react as you did. I'm going to ask for you to ward the door for silence and against intrusion before we begin so that you will know that you're not going to be overheard. And then we'll begin whenever you're ready."

Snape closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. This was not going to be enjoyable, but he was encouraged that he was going to be assured of some privacy by being the one to set the protections. He drew his wand and set the wards. His eyes locked with Least'un's. "I'm ready," he said evenly.

* * *

><p>Their business at Hogwarts was over quickly. A sleepy but concerned Dumbledore had quickly drawn up plans for covering Snape's classes in the upcoming week, and had sent word that if he needed more time off it would be arranged. They made a very quick stop back at the house to pick up more clothing and some toiletries. Returning to Caleb's house, they sat down to what would be a several hour wait. They had cheated their way through one Monopoly game and were started on another when the two wizards came down the stairs. Both seemed a bit subdued, but Snape seemed calm. Least'un called for them to follow, then led them over to Caleb's study, where he and Reuben were engaged in a spirited game of cheating that incidentally involved cards. They all found seats, and Snape slid in next to Deborah and gave her a small wry grin.<p>

Least'un sat on the arm of Jules's chair and lit a cigarette then took a long drag. He exhaled and watched the smoke drift upward into the ceiling beams, taking time to frame his words carefully. "I'll get directly to what everyone has been wanting to know. I have no explanation for how it could have happened, but as all of you have suspected, Snape is an empath. We each are aware that it shouldn't be possible, but once Snape and I began talking things over it explains quite a bit. For one, it explains why he has had some trouble blocking some of us - he's using the type of blocks that work for occlumency, and they don't work as well for empaths. It also helps explain his exceptional abilities as a legilimens-he's working with two sets of tools, so to speak. I'm going to be showing him the ways we block, and I'm counting on the rest of you to help him along with that as well. He is going to need your help because, as you suspected Deborah, he is susceptible to necromancy. He not only saw what had happened at the site, he experienced parts of what went on up there as if it were happening to him, and I leave it to you imagine what that was like."

He cleared his throat then continued. "Once a person undergoes experience like the one he had today, it's like breaking through a barrier. The episodes will come more easily, with or without trying to encourage them to happen. That is why it's essential that he gets solid in blocking our way." He looked directly at Deborah. "How much time do we have?"

"He has all of this coming week off and Albus said that he will see to it that he gets whatever time he needs." She turned and spoke to Snape. "I didn't tell him any specifics of what happened, only that you had had an unexpected experience and needed some time away. He asked that you get in touch with him at your convenience." Snape nodded and frowned. He was not looking forward to explaining any bit of the incident to Dumbledore.

Least'un stretched and yawned. "Better than I had hoped for. And now," he announced to the rest, "I feel as if I could use a drink." He looked pointedly at Snape before he spoke again. "I suggest that you have one or several as well. You might find it makes the rest of the night go more smoothly."

A couple of drinks later, Snape pulled Least'un aside. "When you were talking to the others what did you mean when you said that I was susceptible to necromancy?"

"I was going to get into that with you tomorrow, but no harm doing it right now. The nature of necromancy is very commonly understood, probably because it occurs so rarely and because it is so often faked. The necromancer does not call up the dead, Severus. The dead call up the necromancer." He watched as the faintest flicker of Snape's features betrayed his fear. "Come on, let's get ourselves another drink and I'll tell you what I know."

They settled in a pair of chairs in the far corner of the study. "Now, I'll tell you what I know of this and it's not exhaustive because no one really knows that much about it. Necromancy occurs when those who have died decide to contact the necromancer, not vice versa. Most people's minds are totally closed to the world of the dead and they cannot be used by the dead for communication. But there are a very few people who can be possessed. No one knows why an individual is susceptible to being possessed, but it's believed that part of it might be when the necromancer has a high degree of innate ability to perform mental magic and that another factor seems to be that the necromancer usually has had experiences that relate to what happened to the dead who are attempting contact."

Snape leaned back into his chair and stared at the ceiling. When he finally spoke, his voice was ragged. "Not all, but some."

"Then those specific memories are probably going to start surfacing in your dreams. My guess is that they already have." Snape nodded, still staring at the rough hewn beams above. "They will affect Deborah as well."

He snapped forward and fixed Least'un with an intent stare. "How?"

"Because of the connection between the two of you and the strength of the memories. When two people with high ability have any sort of connection dreams and emotions will flow between the two of them if it's strong enough. Distance weakens it a little but it's still there. She will probably begin to accompany you into some of your memories and dreams. She will likely come along to try to help you. It's not a bad thing, Snape."

"I don't think we have that sort of a connection."

"Oh, no? Then explain to me why she's coming over."

Snape turned his head to look and his heart sank as she walked over and sat on the arm of his chair.

.


End file.
